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, Farmall and IH, and later with a Ford.
My dad takes a break from farm chores to pet Fritz in this June 1980 photo.
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
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
Spools of thread in the sewing box I haven't opened in years.
I ALWAYS THOUGHT I’d sew clothes for my family. That was before children, in the days when I was young and had no realistic concept of the time demands of parenting.
I grew up sewing—clothes for myself, dresses for my Grandma who quilted like a mad woman but couldn’t follow a pattern. She quilted while I stitched shapeless dresses for her from polyester and cotton.
Nearly all of the clothing I wore as a teen in the 1970s, I made. Hot pants. Smocks. Dresses. Elephant leg pants, which never fit right around the waist because I was way too skinny. Pajamas. Even underwear, a rather challenging task presented by a home economics teacher who thought we should sew underwear from some slinky, slippery impractical fabric. The project was a failure.
But I digress. I loved to sew—to choose crisp, cotton fabric, and, yes, sometimes even stretchy polyester, from bolts packed onto shelves in the fabric store or in the basement of J.C. Penney in Redwood Falls or in the grocery store/general store in Lucan. The prints were psychedelic pieces of art—bold and crazy and colorful.
I can't state with certainty that this is cotton fabric from the 1970s. I picked it up several years ago at a thrift store because it reminds me of psychedelic 70s prints.
I loved paging through thick catalogs of patterns, choosing just the right trendy design to match manufactured clothes.
While I didn’t particularly enjoy the pinning of tissue paper patterns to fabric or the measuring and cutting process, I loved sliding the fabric across the sewing machine, stitching straight, even lines or easy curves until I’d created something I could wear.
There's a certain satisfaction in guiding fabric under a pressure foot, the needle pumping through fabric.
The ability to sew truly rated as a necessity more than an indulgence in a creative outlet. Our poor farm family couldn’t afford closets full of store-bought clothes. If I wanted clothing, I would need to sew them.
So, with that background, I expected to continue sewing as an adult. When I graduated from high school, my parents gave me a Sears Kenmore sewing machine as my graduation gift. My oldest brother got a car. Yeah, well…
My 1974 sewing machine, a graduation gift from my parents.
Fast forward through college—definitely no time for sewing then, except during breaks back home on the farm. Launched into the working world 3 ½ years later as a newspaper reporter, I had precious little time for sewing.
And so the years passed, until I became a mother in 1986 with grandiose plans of stitching cute little dresses for my first-born daughter. That never happened and I had even less time when my second daughter arrived 21 months later. On a tight time and money budget, I mostly relied on rummage sale clothes to dress my daughters and later, my son.
It’s been years now since I used my sewing machine. Somewhere in the busyness of raising three children and in the economic reality that I could purchase store-bought or recycled for less than the cost of fabric and a pattern, I lost interest in sewing.
I haven’t lost, though, the thrill of walking into the fabric section of a store, perusing the bolts of cloth and running my hands across the woven threads.
And it seems to me that the prints today are bold and crazy and colorful, quite like the psychedelic prints of the 70s.
HOW ABOUT YOU? Did you, like me, sew at one time? Or are you a creative seamstress, stitching away today?
Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
LIKE MOST PHOTOGRAPHERS, I shoot a seemingly infinite number of images. That can lead to forgetting photos filed in my computer.
But then one day—as in Thursday—I was asked about an image in a file I hadn’t perused in a long time. A Californian wanted to use a photo of an elderly man, presumably a farmer or a retired farmer, in a PowerPoint presentation for a nonprofit. I shot the image at the Rice County Steam and Gas Engine Show as the man walked past the wheel of an old Rumely steam engine.
The West Coaster needed the photo to emphasize the point that farmers represent only two percent of the population and their average age is pushing 60. I didn’t fact-check those statistics. But I did check out the nonprofit before agreeing to her request.
This inquiry led me to sift through two folders full of photos from the steam and gas engine show. Within these files lie images that, alone, wouldn’t be enough to comprise a blog post. But, pooled, they make for interesting content wherein I raise some questions, point out the unusual and share memories.
I present to you then the forgotten photos. Feel free to comment. I’m quite certain you will have a few thoughts to share once you seen the featured subjects and read my words.
PHOTO A: What have we here, dear readers? Look to the left and scan to the right and you see horns on a wagon, a lawn tractor and an apparently handcrafted tractor. What is the meaning of this?
PHOTO B: Unfortunately, dear readers, I do not need you to tell me that this is a fly strip. Because I grew up on a dairy farm, I am quite familiar with this gross, sticky fly catching strip. One hung in our farmhouse porch where filthy chore clothes and manure-laden buckle overshoes lined the walls and floor. Another fly strip dangled over the Formica kitchen table as a rather unappetizing bit of home decor fly trap. But at least it kept the flies off our dinner plates.
PHOTO C: Two questions: Why is a chemical company publishing a cookbook? Can anyone tell me anything about Heinrich Chemical Company of Minneapolis?
PHOTO D: Did you play with a cap gun as a child? I did. I played “Cowboys and Indians” with my siblings. I know that phrase is not politically correct today, but I was a child of the 1960s, the time of westerns. I watched Gunsmoke and Rawhide on television. And if we’d gotten more than one channel on our black-and-white T.V., I would have watched Bonanza, too. And, yes, I do remember life before television.
PHOTO E: After a quick online search, I failed to find another Massey Ferguson Ski Whiz snowmobile like this one. My husband and I have concluded that this double-seater was handcrafted from two machines. What do you think?
PHOTO F: This image spurs an observation. See how the wings on the Dekalb sign align with the Oliver making the tractor appear to have wings? I did not plan the shot, did not even notice what I’d composed until after the fact. I know that Dekalb symbol well as I detasseled corn for the seed corn company and my dad grew Dekalb corn. Any experienced corn detasselers out there?
THERE YOU HAVE IT. A few photos to possibly bring back memories, prompt discussion or simply amuse you.
© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Letters from a 1960s Scrabble for Juniors game. The player who laid down a tile to complete a word printed on the game board earned a red counter. The player with the most counters won the game.
MY FINGERS SLIDE across the smooth, one-eighth-inch thick, blue cardboard squares imprinted with letters. B, M, C, R, O, A…and the dreaded Q, if I’m without a U.
In these tile letters, I touch childhood memories of gathering around the Formica kitchen table set upon worn red-and-white linoleum tiles to play Scrabble for Juniors.
The cover of the vintage Scrabble game for kids from my childhood.
It is the early 1960s and this “crossword game for children” manufactured by Selchow & Richter Company, Bay Shore, N.Y., marks my introduction to Scrabble, which today, in the grown-up version, remains my favorite board game.
Imagine that.
Imagine then me, a wee wisp of a grade school girl leaning across the table to snatch letters from a box lid, shaping those letters into a word and then, triumphantly, carefully, lining the letters upon the playing board, all the while scolding my siblings for bumping the table.
To play on this side of the vintage Scrabble board, players laid letters down to complete the pre-printed words. Lay down the last letter tile in a word, and you earned a red counter chip.
The 1960s Scrabble box cover includes an image of a cowboy at a time when television westerns were popular.
On the flip side of the vintage board, players created their own words, earning one point for each tile in each word formed or modified. As I recall, I couldn't get my siblings to play this side of the board too often.
While I’m certain my brothers and sisters wanted to win, I doubt their interest in this word game ever matched my passion. I delighted in unscrambling the letters into words. Words. Glorious words. Through my cat-eye glasses, I could envision the possibilities.
My earliest memories are of words read aloud from books. Books. Glorious books. At age four, after surgery to correct crossed eyes, I remember Dr. Fritsche at the New Ulm hospital asking me to look at a book. I could see. The pages. The words. The pictures.
Can you imagine how my parents must have worried about their little girl’s vision, how, as a poor farm family they scraped together enough money for the surgery that would keep me from going blind in one eye? I am, to this day, grateful for the gift of sight.
Those are my thoughts on this morning, the day after I heard a bit of trivia on the radio about Scrabble, information that proved to be false. Scrabble was not invented in 1955 as the radio announcer shared.
Rather, Alfred Mosher Butts, an unemployed architect, conceived the idea during the Great Depression and trademarked it in 1948.
For those of you who appreciate trivia, here’s some Minnesota trivia to tuck away in your brain: Jim Kramer, a proofreader from Roseville, Minnesota, won the U.S. Scrabble Open in 2006. This past year, he ranked fourth in the Division 1 section of the National Scrabble Championship and earned $1,000. Three other Minnesotans—from Minneapolis, Rosemount and Spring Lake Park—were among the 108 players participating in the Division 1 competition.
What, I wonder, initially drew these Minnesotans to Scrabble? Did they, like me, gather around the kitchen table as a child to grab letters from a box, form the letters into words and then slide those letters onto a playing board? Do they, like me, love words?
Letters in the adult version of a Scrabble game I received as a Christmas gift in the 1970s.
LET’S HEAR FROM YOU. What’s your favorite board game and why? What are your memories of playing board games as a child? Do you still play board games?
As any Scrabble player would know, I could not legitimately make the word "Minnesota" in a Scrabble game. But this is my blog and these are my rules. If anyone is ever up to a game of Scrabble, I'll play. The guys in my house just don't seem to enjoy word games.
© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
CHRISTMAS WITH THE KLETSCHERS could never be termed as uneventful. Thanks to my fun-loving family (typically led by one especially crazy sister), we are always assured that our time together will be laced with laughter, love and a few surprises.
This year the party planning sister arrived at our middle brother’s house on the southwestern Minnesota prairie with an armful of vintage hats for the women, and occasionally the men, to wear. We were remarkably chic. Not a single hat resembled the hideous ribbon-style fascinator sprouted by Princess Beatrice at Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding. We Minnesota women possess far better taste than English royalty.
My party-planning sister and her daughter in their hats. My niece's hat is actually a re-purposed baby birds hand puppet that matches her mom's bird nest hat.
I suggested my eldest daughter start a new fashion trend in Minneapolis with her hat.
A few of the guys, including this unidentified family member, briefly wore vintage hats.
I can’t say the same for all attire worn at the holiday gathering. At one point my eldest daughter donned a Christmas sweater, duly admired by her grandmother who likely did not realize the sweater was a joke.
Look to the center of this image and you'll see my sister in her Grinch outfit ready to lead us in the gift exchange.
However, we all roared at the outfit my sister slipped into for the entertaining gift exchange that involves much hoopla and swapping of presents. Only this sister could carry off wearing a Grinch shirt with such fashionable flair.
My fun-loving middle brother suggested this photo op contrasting the modern Kindle with the antique crank wall telephone. There's also a crank phone in the basement and sometimes we pretend to call from the basement to the upstairs, shouting as loud as we can.
Later, a Kindle quickly became a source of entertainment for, ahem, those of us who’ve never seen such technology.
Santa surprised us all. Much laughter and many hugs and lots of photos followed.
Santa swooped in for a surprise visit, bringing back memories for the 20 – 30-something age group who remember past family Christmases with the old young jolly man in attendance.
For the second Christmas in a row we gathered outside for...sorry can't tell you.
We topped off the evening by shrugging into our winter coats and gathering outside the garage for…well…I can’t reveal that part of our family celebration. Suffice to say you would be impressed.
HOW DOES YOUR FAMILY make Christmas fun and memorable? Let’s hear. We’re always open to new entertainment options.
© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Santa poses with my mom and the younger generation at a family holiday gathering on Friday evening.
AGE MATTERS NOT. Not one bit. Not when it comes to Santa.
He’s still magical, whether you’re 12 or 79 ½ or any age in between.
Friday evening, 24 hours before his busiest night of the year, Santa blew into a rural Redwood County residence on the southwestern Minnesota prairie, arriving so unexpectedly that he nearly rocketed a sister-in-law of mine straight out of her chair to the North Pole.
With a rapid drumming on the dining room window, he startled more than a few family members before slipping through a patio door into our holiday gathering.
The oldest family member surprised by Santa's visit, my 79-year-old mom. I should mention that my mom typically does not wear a fancy hat. But my middle sister started a tradition this year of all the women wearing fancy vintage hats. She brought enough for all of us to wear and it was great fun.
The youngest family member in attendance, my 12-year-old nephew, clearly enjoyed Santa's visit, too.
Hugs and handshakes and laughter and good-natured ribbing and even a kiss, followed by countless photos with Santa, defined the surprise visit now imprinted upon our memories.
I love this about my extended family. We don’t allow age to define our fun.
We still believe in Santa.
Santa made the rounds, greeting each family member, except my middle brother who had vanished.
My son and eldest daughter had their picture taken with Santa. My other daughter was unable to make it back to Minnesota for Christmas because she was working at her job as a Spanish medical interpreter in eastern Wisconsin.
Then Santa waved goodbye...
...and magically disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.
HOW ABOUT YOU? What crazy things does your family do at Christmas time to build memories? Does your family still believe in Santa?
© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
The doll representing the Christ Child during the Trinity Lutheran Sunday School program on December 17.
FOR THE FIRST TIME in as long as I can remember, I missed Christmas Eve worship services. We were traveling home from a family gathering in southwestern Minnesota.
So this morning, back in Faribault, my husband, eldest daughter, son and I attended Christmas Day services at Trinity Lutheran Church in Faribault.
While a morning worship service doesn’t hold quite the mood-setting anticipation of worshiping on Christmas Eve with candles glowing soft and white holiday lights sparkling bright in the fading daylight and kids restless with excitement, I appreciated the contentment of singing old, familiar hymns on Christmas morning.
From the opening “Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful” to the recessional “Joy to the World,” and many songs in between, I was reminded of all those childhood Christmas Eve worship services at St. John’s Lutheran in Vesta.
Dad hurried to finish the milking early so we could get to church, to participate in the Sunday School program and sing the same old, familiar hymns we sang today: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” “From Heaven Above to Earth I Come,” and “Angels We Have Heard on High.”
Although we didn’t sing “Silent Night, Holy Night” this morning, we listened to a teenage girl coo a sweet, lovely rendition. And we heard another teen strum “What Child Is This?” on his guitar.
It was a lovely service of praise, voices uplifted in the joyful comfort of aged hymns to celebrate Christ’s birth.
From my family to yours, we wish you a most blessed Christmas.
© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
KIds wait in the narthex of Trinity Lutheran Church, Faribault, for the processional into the sanctuary during the Sunday School Christmas program. I shot with natural light, meaning a slow shutter speed, perfect for capturing the "can't stand still" action of these little ones who were so excited.
CHRISTMAS IS NOT Christmas to me without the Sunday School Christmas program.
From little on—when I recited my “piece” at the St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Sunday School Christmas Eve program, hoping I wouldn’t get a long bible verse with a word like “Nazareth” to trip my tongue—to today, when I can simply sit and observe, I’ve always treasured this part of celebrating Christ’s birth.
Through the years, my own three children participated at Trinity Lutheran in Faribault, playing the roles of Mary and an angel and Joseph and maybe even a shepherd. I have forgotten.
I do remember, though, the year I was 7 ½ months pregnant with my son and waddled into church feeling like the Blessed Mother herself. That was 18 years ago.
Saturday night I grabbed my camera and attempted to capture those moments that have always endeared me to this special children’s worship service—the red Christmas dresses, the bathrobe shepherd’s garb, the fluttering of angel’s wings, the joyful singing of familiar Christmas hymns, the kids who can’t stand still no matter how hard they try or don’t try, the goodie bags…
At Trinity in Faribault, a new generation of children sang and I remembered those Christmases so many years ago back on the prairie, waiting in the basement of St. John’s, inching up the stairway, walking in pairs down the church aisle singing “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful…”
Such memories. Such joy at Christmas time.
The beginning of the children's Christmas program at Trinity on Saturday evening.
Children, ages 3 through kindergarten, sing. Lots of action here.
The angels wait just outside the sanctuary for their cue to enter.
The angels approach the manger at the front of the church.
"O Antiphons," lined up below the pipes of the organ, were used during Advent services to symbolize the names or titles given to the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ, in many Old Testament prophecies.
After the service, I found this cue card for the children and this hymnal, open to "Joy to the World," on a front pew.
DO YOU HAVE special memories of a Sunday School Christmas program?
© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
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