Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Travel stories from Argentina November 10, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:28 AM
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Castle at Estancia La Candelaria in Argentina.

 

AS DIFFERENT AS my second-born and I are—she’s a fearless traveler, I’m not—we share a common passion and talent. We are both writers.

I never purposely led Miranda on this path, although I suspect that my endless reading aloud of books to her as a child instilled a basic love of language.

She chose to pursue writing on her own with me offering encouragement from the sidelines. In high school, she served as co-editor of the student newspaper, never backing down even when challenged by the principal. At the University of Wisconsin- La Crosse, she also wrote, and edited, for the student newspaper.

Last week Miranda began freelancing for examiner.com, St. Paul. She’s a travel writer with the online entity, and a darned good one. She focuses on Argentina, her adopted country, and the place where she’s studied, done mission work and interned. She just returned from Buenos Aires three weeks ago after a 4 ½-month stint there, her second time in that South American capital city.

Since her return to Minnesota, Miranda has been searching for a job that will utilize her Spanish-speaking skills. She has a Spanish degree and wants to work as an interpreter or translator. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that she opted for minors in international studies and communications studies.

While she searches for employment, Miranda is volunteering with a local charitable service center, helping with Spanish interpreting.

She is also staying connected to the Latin America culture via those examiner.com, St. Paul, articles. She’s penned some interesting features about gauchos, a Buenos Aires cemetery, a favorite pancake restaurant and Mafalda, Argentina’s most popular comic strip. But don’t take my word for it. Read for yourself by checking out the travel section of examiner.com, St. Paul.

 

 

An Argentine gaucho

 

 

Statue at Chacarita Cemetery, Buenos Aires, Argentina

 

PHOTOS BY MIRANDA HELBLING

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

An attack in Argentina and how I’m dealing with the crime in Minnesota September 29, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:50 AM
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WHEN THE PHONE RANG early Tuesday afternoon and I picked up to a dial tone, I didn’t think much of it. Just another telemarketer, I figured. But then, the phone sounded again and my 20-something daughter was on the line, speaking to me from Argentina.

“It’s good to hear from you,” I say, surprised really that she is calling given we spoke only several days earlier.

“Well, uh, Mom, I was robbed last night,” she tells me.

I am shocked, momentarily speechless, until I spit out the dreaded words, “Are you OK?”

She is. But her purse and all of its contents are gone—her debit and credit cards, and other important identification, her cell phone and camera. She is stranded, without money, or access to money, with only her passport, in northern Argentina, hours and hours away from her temporary home in Buenos Aires and 6,000 miles from her Minnesota home.

I am thankful, first, that she has not been physically hurt. She sounds fine; she’s had more time than me to digest what’s happened.

Then I ask for details because I need to know how this happened. My daughter shares how she and her friend Ivanna were walking through a “nice neighborhood” toward downtown around 8:30 p.m. Monday when a man came out of nowhere from behind them. He grabbed for my daughter’s purse and as she fought off her attacker, Ivanna screamed for help. Eventually the man got the purse as my daughter fell to the ground. Her assailant, in his mid 30s, sprinted away, hopping onto the back of a motorcycle driven by his accomplice.

Then my second-born tells me she saw no gun, no knife, and I am relieved, yet scared all over again thinking about the possibilities.

All I want is to see my daughter, to hug her, to feel her hair brushing against my cheek, to tell her I love her, to keep her safe.

But for now I can only listen and offer words and lay out a plan to deal with the aftermath of this crime. She and Ivanna immediately went to the local police station. My daughter tells me they waited for an interminable time to speak to the single employee who was working. Several other employees there were simply joking around, she says, and offered no assistance.

Vicariously I am already angry with the police system in this large northern Argentine city. I wonder what today will bring when the two must return to the police station to work on a composite sketch of their attacker.

Back here in Minnesota, I have already spent hours on the phone contacting companies and agencies about the stolen cards. Everyone I’ve talked to has been kind and understanding when I explain what has happened. That reduces the stress level some. Yet, all the phone calls, all the directives to do this and that are wearing on me. During several conversations my voice cracks and I struggle to keep from totally breaking down.

I know this could happen to anyone, anywhere. My oldest daughter, who lives in Minneapolis, tells me this, that this crime could happen on the streets of Minneapolis. She is right. Yet, when an assault like this occurs in a foreign country, 6,000 miles from Minnesota, the whole situation becomes more complicated by distance and communication issues.

I have no doubt that my daughter will recover. She is a strong woman.

As for me, I am counting the days now—23 of them—until she arrives at The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. I cannot wait to have my daughter back, safe in my arms, far from the men who would rob her, and me, of our security.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

If only I could have gotten inside this prairie antique store September 13, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:40 AM
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LATE SUNDAY MORNING we turned off the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway in Springfield, pulled by the prairie winds.

That would be Prairie Winds Antiques, an appropriate name for a business on the edge of this farming community on the wind-swept prairie of southwestern Minnesota.

My sister Lanae had stopped there the day before and picked up an antique—shelves or a box or something—I never saw it.

“There’s an antique store in Springfield?” I asked, even exclaimed when she raved about the place.

“Oh, yeah,” she said.

And that was enough to draw me to Prairie Winds Antiques. So, Sunday, as my husband, son and I were returning to Faribault from a weekend in rural Redwood County, the guys indulged me (sort of) and we pulled off U.S. Highway 14.

I must clarify that this stop did not come without protest from the teenager in the back seat who was reading a book and was overtired from a night of star-gazing under the inky black expanse of prairie sky.

But we stopped anyway, and lucky for him, but unlucky for me, Prairie Winds Antiques was closed, despite the OPEN sign.

Despite the OPEN signage, Prairie Winds Antiques was locked late Sunday morning.

That didn’t stop me from poking around the exterior of the shop, where a cluttered yard full of antiques and collectibles sat exposed to the elements. Pails, tables, signs, farm machinery, garden art, soda bottles, wash tubs, bicycles, sleds, an old car…lots to peruse in the presence of an impatient son.

Even outdoors, you'll find lots of antiques and collectibles at Prairie Winds Antiques.

So I hurried as quickly as I can hurry around old stuff, snapping a few photos and wondering if the pile of stuff that looked like it was in a pile of junk to be burned was really a pile to be burned. I was tempted to take the painted wooden bird with the spindly wire legs from the burning pile because it reminded me of the kitschy painted wooden yard art my grandpa staked in his front yard.

But I didn’t.

You can bet that the next time we’re driving U.S. Highway 14—the road west so many years ago for those brave, adventuresome pioneers—that we’ll pull into Prairie Winds Antiques again. I need to get inside that place. Oh, yeah.

The wooden crates crammed with old soda bottles remind me of the days of my youth when pop was a treat reserved for special family celebrations like birthdays.

On-site prairie grasses dip and sway in the wind around old farm equipment at Prairie Winds Antiques on the west edge of Springfield.

This Flying Red Horse is attached to the garage at the antique shop. I've always had an affinity for this gas station symbol. As a youngster, when our family traveled once a year to visit relatives in Minneapolis, our dad always told us to "Watch for the Flying Red Horse." I don't recall why or where that horse was located; it may have been a landmark to direct us to the right road. I wish I could remember.

I spotted this grasshopper clinging to the edge of a long, weathered table sitting in the yard at the antique store. I immediately thought of the grasshoppers that, in the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder, infested this land and destroyed crops. Wilder wrote about the grasshoppers in her "Little House" books.

I do not like real chickens, not one bit. But these two free-range fake birds charmed me. I cannot even believe I just wrote that.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

PEACHES and cheese and Splitladder Syder August 20, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 12:33 PM
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IF I HAD TO NAME my favorite fruits, I would choose blueberries, strawberries and peaches.

So you can imagine my excitement upon glimpsing a PEACHES sign while traveling along Minnesota Highway 60 near Lake Crystal last Saturday morning. Unfortunately my husband and I were on a tight schedule and were heading away from that tempting sign.

Welsh Heritage Farms Apple Orchard & Pie Shop near Lake Crystal

Fast forward to the early evening hours when, upon our return trip, I remembered that PEACHES place just in time for Randy to veer into the right turn lane.

I’m so glad I made that split-second decision to stop. We discovered not only juicy Missouri peaches at Welsh Heritage Farms, but a plethora of other goodies inside the double red pole sheds. Heritage Farms, a family-owned business which advertises itself as an apple orchard and pie shop, is that and much more.

I eyed the apple crisp and apple butter, the mustard, the honey and the soup mixes among the many offerings. I tasted the apple cider donuts and almost gave in to hunger pangs. But I stuck to the healthy peaches and Michigan blueberries. Well, not quite, as you will read.

Tempting Welsh Heritage Farms cider donuts

Honey from Harris Honey Company in nearby Madelia

Country style buckets for the in-season peaches

Missouri peaches for the picking from the peach wagon.

NEXT TO THE MAIN BUSINESS sits another building, Harbo Cider Winery and Cheese Shop. We were directed there by Pamela Harbo, Welsh Heritage Farms co-owner/operator. Her son, Tim, runs the business. For a cheese-lover like me, this equates cheese heaven.

Harbo Cider Winery & Cheese Shop next to Welsh Heritage Farms

Tim carries 47 varieties of cheese, all of which (if I recall) hail from Wisconsin. Yes, I felt a moment of disloyalty to Minnesota cheese makers. But that didn’t stop me from sampling several cheeses and purchasing Henning’s Blueberry Cobbler Cheddar—a white cheddar marbled with blueberries—and Hook’s Blue Paradise ™ Cheese, the creamiest blue cheese I’ve ever tasted. (My apologies to the Swiss Valley Farms Cooperative of Iowa which recently purchased Faribo Dairy, my community’s maker of outstanding Amablu and Amablu St. Pete’s Select blue cheeses.)

Of course, along with that cheese, we needed a little wine, or hard cider. Unfamiliar with hard cider, I asked Tim for an explanation as I sipped. Hard cider is made from pressed and fermented apples and was once this country’s most popular alcoholic beverage, he tells me. Think apple trees and Prohibition.

Splitladder Syder. Love that name.

Surprisingly, Tim’s 6.5 percent alcohol content Splitladder Syder, tastes nothing like apples, but similar to a dry white wine. He was the first in Minnesota to produce the hard cider for sale, he says.

While I didn’t buy any hard cider, I would recommend it as a fine accompaniment to cheese.

I would also recommend pulling off highway 60 between Mankato and Lake Crystal to check out Welsh Heritage Farms and Harbo Cider Winery and Cheese Shop. You might want to watch for an APPLES sign, though, as the season transitions from Missouri peaches to Minnesota apples.

The entry to Welsh Heritage Farms Apple Orchard & Pie Shop.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

My daughter experiences Argentine healthcare: A “nice” doctor, but… July 13, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:15 AM
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“I THOUGHT I SHOULD let you guys know that right now I am sick…”

This is not the e-mail news I want to read from my 22-year-old daughter who is living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has a fever, runny nose and a cough, all the symptoms of H1N1.

Unfortunately, I am well aware that a year ago Argentina suffered a major outbreak of the illness with a death rate (1.6 percent) more than three times the world average, according to a July 3, 2009, New York Times article. Yet, those deaths ran behind Mexico and the United States. Currently the World Health Organization reports that Argentina has “low activity and only sporadic detections of both pandemic and seasonal influenza viruses during the early part of winter.”

Yet, this provides little reassurance to me, a Minnesota mom with an unvaccinated daughter nearly 6,000 miles away who is exhibiting H1N1 symptoms.

Didn’t I tell her to get the H1N1 vaccine last winter at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, where she was finishing her senior year of college? She didn’t and I didn’t push the issue. Now I regret my lackadaisical attitude.

“Please don’t worry about me; I’m sure I will be better soon,” my daughter writes. “I’ve been drinking lots of water and tea. Also, my roommate Lucas has been taking really good care of me, bringing me soup, Kleenex, tea, water etc. Later today when he gets home from work he is going to go w/ me to the doctor.”

OK then, she tells me not to worry, but she feels sick enough to see a physician. This is not good.

But I am here, she is there and I can’t exactly bring her chicken soup. So, as any responsible mom would do, I worry and await her next e-mail.

The next morning she updates me. She doesn’t have H1N1, but a viral infection that should clear up in three days. My daughter relays that the doctor was nice and seemed competent, checking her temperature, blood pressure, heart, throat, symptoms, etc., “all the normal stuff they do in the States.” Alright then, that’s good.

But then she tells me about the free public clinic. “The clinic was probably the worst clinic I’ve ever been to. We had to wait forever to see the doctor, and they only had super-uncomfortable wooden benches in the very cold waiting room. After a while, I decided it would be more comfortable to sit on the floor b/c I could at least put my head against the wall, and Lucas covered me up w/ his jacket. This was a good idea b/c it was indeed more comfy and then 2 different doctors came up to us and tried to get us in sooner b/c I probably looked like crap. Also, the bathroom there was EXTREMELY disgusting! I don’t think any of the toilets flushed, there was no toilet paper (thankfully I had some Kleenex w/ me), and the sinks weren’t working.”

OK, up until that revelation, I was feeling better.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

The “truth” about the color of that pink Argentine palace June 26, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:15 AM
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IF YOU SEE A PINK building, you might think, “Oh, how beautiful” or “Oh, how ugly.” You also probably will wonder “why pink,” somewhat of an odd color choice (especially in Minnesota).

Argentina's presidential palace, La Casa Rosada, is painted pink. This is the back of the palace.

In Argentina, though, the presidential palace is pink. And there is, according to my daughter Miranda who is currently interning with a company that gives walking tours of Buenos Aires, a very good reason.

“La Casa Rosada is pink because they used to mix cows’ blood with the clay/rock to preserve the building against humidity,” she tells me after learning this trivia during her first day on the job.

“Yuck, gross, disgusting,” I inwardly react and then wonder whether this is fact or urban legend.

But brief online research confirms the cows’ blood angle. (Just a note here: The palace has been repainted, so when you view it today, this is not the original cows’ blood tint you see.)

Additionally, I learn that the pink symbolizes unity between the two main political parties—distinguished by red and white—at the time of palace construction in 1873.

Whatever the total truth, the cows’ blood angle has forever changed my perspective on pretty pink palaces.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Photo courtesy of Miranda Helbling

 

A mother’s thoughts as her daughter leaves for Argentina June 9, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:31 AM
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I TOSSED AND TURNED LAST NIGHT, as if wrestling alligators in my sleep, although I dreamed of white rats.

Twice I got up, once to pop an Ibuprofen that I hoped would loosen the muscles in my shoulders that felt like taut, knotted ropes.

The drug worked its magic, if but briefly. I awoke this morning with tension pain still sweeping across my shoulders.

I expect that ache to linger, at least until I hear from my Argentine-bound daughter. She leaves in several hours from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport bound for Houston and then for Buenos Aires.

I’ve made her promise to contact me as soon as possible, to assure me she’s safely reached her destination.

You would think by now that I would be used to this footloose, fancy-free life my second daughter leads. She’s been to Argentina before, lived there for six months while studying abroad and doing mission work. Prior to that, she traveled domestically, beginning in high school.

But this time it’s different. She’s on her own, arriving in Buenos Aires without a defined living space, without a defined schedule of activities, without parameters set by a university. She’ll stay in a hostel for awhile until she finds an apartment.

She’ll be a working woman, interning as a public relations assistant with a company that offers walking tours of the Argentine capital.

I worry that she won’t come home. She’s a Spanish major who loves South America. But my daughter assures me that she purchased a two-way ticket.

The practical, sensible mother in me wants her to stay here, in Minnesota (heck, I’d even settle for the Midwest, even the U.S.), and find a good-paying job (even just a job) to repay the college loans that will come due later this year.

But I must let her go, to follow her dreams, to take this adventure, now while she’s young and free.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling