Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by 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

 

Transitioning through parenthood and letting go June 3, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:14 AM
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In December we helped move my second daughter into an apartment as she started her first post-college job.

ONCE UPON A TIME, like 15 to 20, maybe even seven, years ago, I dreaded my kids graduating from high school, leaving for college and then eventually landing jobs. It would mean they no longer needed me and I could barely stand the thought of their absence.

But since then, since the two oldest followed the path of degrees, jobs and their own apartments, I’ve changed my attitude.

I rather like the lessening of parental responsibility that comes with their independence. It’s freeing. Not that I don’t worry about them; I still do. But it’s different now when they can basically fend for themselves.

My second oldest daughter graduated from the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, last spring.

With that frame of mind, I recently visited my second oldest daughter in eastern Wisconsin, where she started work in December as a Spanish medical interpreter. Her first post-college job. Her first apartment of her own. She’d officially grown up.

I would have preferred that she settle closer to her hometown of Faribault instead of 300 miles away. But I’ve reminded myself many times that at least she’s in the U.S., within easy driving distance, and not in Argentina.

Nothing against Argentina. My daughter studied abroad in Buenos Aires and later returned for an internship. But I didn’t want her settling there, 6,000 miles away. I feared she might. Live there. Permanently.

That said, I have only myself to blame for the wanderlust spirits my 23-year-old and 25-year-old daughters possess. Because I grew up on a southwestern Minnesota dairy and crop farm, I seldom traveled as a child—once to Duluth and once to The Black Hills. I wanted my children to travel. I didn’t want them to be like me—someone who prefers, as my dad would have said, “to see the smoke from the chimney.”

And so I let them go, first as young children, to bible camp. Then, in high school, my eldest took her first out-of-state spring break mission trip to Texas. More mission and church and school trips followed as step by step by step they stretched their travel wings.

Then, during my eldest daughter’s freshman year of college, she signed up for a mission trip that took her to Paraguay. Heck, I had to dig out the globe to locate that country which borders Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia. I panicked, regretting for more than a few days my decision to raise children who enjoyed traveling.

Later, when my daughter journeyed to Costa Rica for a brief study sojourn, I barely gave her trip a second thought.

I could handle those short trips.

But then one summer the eldest worked in West Virginia and she was definitely gone for more than 10 days.

That, thankfully, prepared me for her sister’s decision to study abroad and do mission work in Argentina for six months and then return a second time for an internship.

Through the years, I’ve watched that desire to travel, to see the world, become an integral part of my daughters’ lives. The oldest one, who lives and works in the metro, is always plotting her next adventure.

The daughter who lives in Wisconsin will need to chisel away at her college loans and save some money before she can travel again. Right now she earns barely enough to pay the bills. But the time will come when she can resume traveling.

My oldest daughter and my son.

ALL OF THIS BRINGS ME back full circle to the first paragraph in this post, the one about lamenting my children growing up and leaving home. In a year my 17-year-old graduates from high school. He doesn’t know yet where he’ll attend college—whether close or far away. Life could take him anywhere.

Like his sisters, I won’t hold him back, won’t stop him from pursuing his dreams, from traveling to far away places. I’ve already let him go—to Spain on a Spanish class trip. That wasn’t easy, not easy at all, to allow my boy to journey so far at the age of 16.

But his sisters have blazed the way, have shown me that I can handle this part of parenting and handle it with grace. I’ve raised them all to be strong, independent and fearless individuals.

I’m beginning to enjoy this stage of life, with fewer parental responsibilities and new types of relationships forming with my adult children. I’m confident I’ve done my best as a parent, although best certainly isn’t perfect.

Now it’s time, almost, to move on, to continue supporting and encouraging my 17-year-old son as he transitions into adulthood and to always support my daughters, holding all three of them forever close, yet letting them go.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Wash day May 16, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:59 AM
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I CARE NOT ONE bit that he detests the rough feel of a scratchy towel against his skin, the abrasive texture of cotton encasing his foot or the stiffness of line-dried blue jeans brushing against his legs.

Nothing. Not my teen’s complaints, or pleads or requests will stop me from hanging freshly-laundered clothes outside to dry.

It is one of my joys—to hoist a basket of wet clothes onto my hip, lug the basket upstairs from the dark cave of a basement laundry room and then step onto the back stoop into the bright sunshine of a spring morning.

Methodically I work my way through the pile of wet clothes, clipping them onto the clothesline as the early day sun warms my fingers and the wind whips socks and jeans and underclothing and shirts into a frenzied dance.

The simplicity of this task pleases me, connects me to the land and to the women before me who toiled, hanging their faded calico dresses, their hand-stitched crazy quilts, their worn aprons, and the patched trousers of their men and sons under the prairie sun.

As my fingers touch the wet cloth, bind cloth to line, I am bound, by this simple act of hanging out the wash, to generations of women.

Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Five years after a hit-and-run driver struck my son May 12, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:16 AM
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I live on one of Faribault's busiest residential streets, also a main route for the ambulance.

FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY on May 12, 2006, my then 12-year-old son was struck by a car as he crossed the street to his school bus stop.

Less than a block from home, his slender body slammed against a car and then somersaulted through the air. He landed dazed, shaken and injured along the side of the street.

Fear, unlike any I had ever experienced, gripped my heart and consumed my very being on that cool and drizzly May morning two days before Mother’s Day. In the minutes between my awareness of the accident and the confirmation that my son was OK, I feared the worst—that I had lost my boy.

I had not. He suffered only a broken bone in his hand, a bump on his head, scrapes and a possible rib fracture. Minor injuries, really, compared to what could have been.

For too many parents, the tragic death of a child is reality and I wonder how they cope. Via faith, family and friends? Somehow they manage to go on living.

In my son’s case, I also wonder how the driver copes. He/she fled the scene and has never been found. How can that driver of a blue, 4-door Chevrolet Cavalier or Corsica live with his/her actions?

It is incomprehensible to me that anyone could strike a child with a vehicle and then simply drive away.

Faribault police, early on, suspected the driver had a reason—ie. driving without a license, driving drunk, no insurance, prior record—to leave.

Despite numerous leads, including one which came via an anonymous letter penned by someone with a personal vendetta against a named suspect and another which led investigators to a prison cell, a credible suspect has never been found.

On several occasions police thought they were close to finding the driver. I have not given up hope that the driver can still be found—if conscience finally prevails and/or an individual with knowledge of this too-long-hidden secret chooses to do the right thing and step forward with information.

While the statute of limitations expired three years after the hit-and-run, Neal Pederson of the Faribault Police Department tells me that the case remains open and that his office will follow up on any tips or leads. He noted, however, that if the driver lived out of state for a period of time, the clock stops and the crime could still be investigated and charged.

Anyone with information about the hit-and-run can anonymously call the Faribault Police Department tip line at 507-334-0999 or Crime Stoppers of Minnesota at 1-800-222-8477.

I don’t dwell on finding the driver. A $1,000 reward offered several years ago for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the hit-and-run driver is no longer valid. I always hoped that honesty and decency, not a monetary reward, would be the motivating factors in solving this case.

As five years have passed, many, many times I have thanked God for protecting my son from worse injury.

Sometimes still—when I hear the screaming wail of an ambulance as it passes my house along our busy street or when I read a news story about a hit-and-run or drunk driving death—I think of that May morning when my son was struck.

I try to forget. But a memory like this remains forever.

LAST YEAR I WROTE the following poem, which won honorable mention in the poetry division of a state-wide anthology competition. “Hit-and-Run” printed in The Talking Stick, Volume 19, Forgotten Roads, published by The Jackpine Writers’ Bloc.

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.

#

Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Another reminder that I don’t live in Mayberry May 11, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:37 AM
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YESTERDAY MORNING I was obliviously writing on my computer when I noticed a young man standing directly in front of the sidewalk leading to my front door. Now, lots of pedestrians pass my home. But, typically, they do not stand and stare at my house. And typically, they are not wearing black baseball caps tipped to the side nor do red bandannas sprout from their back pockets.

I was not born yesterday. I am well aware of gang colors and attire.

But this man was committing no crime by standing there on a public sidewalk.

However, my intuition told me to keep an eye on him and to let him know I had seen him.

So I walked into the living room, making sure he spotted me through the open front door. I considered slamming the interior door and locking the dead bolt in place. But I figured with a locked screen door, traffic passing by and my cell phone within reach, I was safe. Besides, I didn’t want him to think I was intimidated or afraid.

So I returned to my office, until I heard voices. I walked back to the living room to find the man, now joined by a young woman, sitting on my front steps within feet of me.

I didn’t really think, just strode over to the screen door and boldly blurted, “What are you doing on my front steps?”

The guy said something I couldn’t hear due to the traffic noise and my hearing loss.

But the woman sneered, “Sitting here.”

They didn’t move.

I didn’t budge.

For a split second I worried that I had made a grave mistake by confronting them.

But then they slowly got up and ambled across the street. I watched as the man grabbed at the woman’s arm and she pulled back. I was fully prepared to call 911 to report an assault if the situation escalated. But it didn’t and the couple continued on, separately, until they entered a nearby house.

My husband and I have called 911 before—once in the dead of a cold winter night during an assault and once when a young man pounded on our door seeking protection from a throng of would-be attackers pursuing him.

We don’t live in a high crime neighborhood, like Faribault has a high crime neighborhood. But our community is certainly not immune to serious crime.

Many years ago, two blocks from my house, a man was stabbed in a drug-related case. I watched as a SWAT team searched my block for the murder weapon, a knife.

Last year the SWAT team drove past my house en route to a meth house bust three blocks away.

For years, suspected drug dealers lived across the street from me.

Gang graffiti has been painted onto buildings, fences, stop signs and more as close as directly across the street from me.

I’ve attended several level three sex offender meetings with one of the offenders moving in two blocks away.

Faribault is not Mayberry R.F.D. And yesterday I was reminded of that once again.

ACCORDING TO INFORMATION published in the 2010 Faribault Police Department’s annual report, the Rice County Gang Suppression Unit “has identified 50 gangs and approximately 350 gang members with ties to the City of Faribault. Of the 350, 150 are confirmed gang members, meaning they meet at least three of ten state defined criteria.”

READERS, HOW WOULD YOU have handled the situation I faced yesterday with the suspicious young man staring at my house and then sitting on my front steps with the young woman? Should I have ignored them, done something differently?

Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

A beauty queen moment April 9, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:22 AM
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Six yellow roses and babies breath comprised the bouquet my husband gave to me.

HE STRODE ACROSS the living room with a bouquet of cellophane-wrapped buttercup yellow roses.

The flowers were unexpected, as flowers often are from him.

I stretched my hands to accept the roses, to pull him close, kiss him and tell him how very much this surprise meant to me, how I appreciated the sweetness of it all.

He intuitively seems to understand when I need a day-brightener, a gesture of love and care and concern. And I did, need the roses, to cheer me.

It’s been a difficult past month facing a sudden sensory hearing loss that has left me with near deafness in my right ear. He has been there to support me, to listen, to embrace me in the moments when I feel overwhelmed.

I love this about my husband. In his own quiet way, he understands.

I love that he is teaching our son the art of giving—from the heart—not for an occasion or a have-to or a celebration. Our son will understand that flowers should be all about love.

All of this I thought as I arose from the recliner where I had been reading, slanted the wrapped bouquet across my arms and spontaneously sashayed across the living room, hips swaying, right arm waving in a beauty queen wave.

At that moment I felt as if I had won the crown. And I had.

© Copyright 2011Audrey Kletscher Helbling