Minnesota Prairie Roots

HEY, DIDDLE, DIDDLE, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.

Goodnight room. Goodnight moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon.

Blue moon. Harvest moon. Full moon.

Moon, moon, moon. Whether in a nursery rhyme, a children’s picture book or in a weather report, the moon has always focused our attention.

MOON MEMORIES

As a child, I found myself drawn to the full moon of harvest season. On an October evening, when extended family gathered in a small farmhouse to celebrate my bachelor Uncle Mike’s birthday, the moon shone upon the farmyard and surrounding fields. In the shadows, my cousins and I played “Starlight, Moonlight,” a nocturnal hide-and-seek, until we were called back to the farmhouse for soda pop. There we gathered around a wooden crate of bottled pop while moths beat their wings against the screen door in a desperate attempt to reach a porch light.

Light. In the deep cold of a winter evening, moonlight guided me from barn to house on my childhood farm. My boots crunched against the packed snow, my breath haloing around me, my fingertips numb from doing chores. High above, the moon hovered.

MOON WALK

On July 20, 1969, the moon morphed well beyond a literary subject or a guiding light for me. I watched Neil Armstrong step onto and walk on the moon from the comfort of Martin and Hattie Schmidt’s living room in Posen Township on the southwestern Minnesota prairie. My family was visiting them for the evening as was customary back in those days.

MOON GO-AROUND

All these moon memories rushed back on Wednesday, April 1, when Artemis II launched into space for a go-around, not a landing, on the moon. This time I sat in the comfort of my living room, watching lift-off on my flat screen color television, not a black-and-white bulky TV.

While I didn’t experience the same thrill I felt as a child witnessing the moon walk, the blasting of a rocket into space still impressed me. Such power. Such an unimaginable concept that four astronauts (including a woman) could travel into deep space, thousands and thousands and thousands of miles to the far side of the moon.

And then home. To the moon of nursery rhymes, children’s picture books, seasons and memories.

TELL ME: What are your personal moon stories?

© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling