SOCK MONKEY BOOKMARK

For a Mother’s Day gift in May, my daughter and her husband gave me a book and a sock monkey bookmarker. The book has long-since been read and passed on to the next person to read, but the sock monkey bookmarker has become my long-term reading companion.

Of course, sock monkeys are one of the oldest toys around. Kids used to get them for Christmas during the Depression—hand made by Ma out of worn-out Rockford Red Heel socks. They ended up under Christmas trees from Maine to California during the 1930s.

My bookmarker is an updated version, but it has the same sticky-out ears, same straight-across smile, and same round-button black eyes. However, I’m having one major problem with my sock monkey bookmarker: It’s hard to take any book seriously when it has a sock monkey sticking out of it.

I tried putting the sock monkey into some of the more serious books I had sitting on my shelves: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Norton’s Anthology of English Literature, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. I even tried sticking him in my master’s thesis entitled,

“Analysis of Transferability of Technical Writing in Fulfillment of General Education Requirements,” which was without question the most boring document ever written since the beginning of time.

The results? All the books took on the look of Curious George Goes to the Hospital.

Don’t get me wrong—I love my sock monkey bookmark. All I’m saying is that it’s become more difficult for me to take an author’s angst as seriously as I did before, with the little sock monkey smirking at me over the top of the book.

BIRD FEEDER, SCHMIRD FEEDER

A while ago, I wrote about my non-green thumb when it comes to growing plants. Now I have another admission to make: I also do not attract high-class birds to my bird feeder.

A few weeks ago, we sat at our friends’ home, eating dinner. Outside their window, a couple of bird feeders had attracted three beautiful yellow finches—honestly, just as if they were there to add ambience to the dinner table. We all ate our meal, ooohing and aaaahing over the yellow finches flitting daintily like tiny dancers, hired for our special entertainment.

And once when we were visiting one of Tom’s sisters, we spent a half hour looking out their dining room window at their three bird feeders—and we saw a couple of hummingbirds, three cardinals, a brilliant blue jay, a red-headed woodpecker, and a dozen or so scarlet tangers. It was like watching the nature channel on cable TV.

So why does my bird feeder attract only big, noisy, ugly birds that look like extras in a vampire movie? I don’t know if they’re blackbirds or crows or ravens or what they are. All I know is that they’re huge and rude and scare all the other birds away—plus leave enormous, pungent piles of guano (fancy name for bird poop) on our deck furniture and driveway.

I have tried different kinds of bird seed: “Song Bird!” claims one bag. I buy it, put it into the bird feeder, and suddenly I have 87 turkey vultures circling around my yard.

I have tried “Black Oil Sunflower” and “Striped Sunflower,” hoping to attract the goldfinches, cardinals, and bluejays that the bag says I will attract. Instead, ugly brown rough-legged desert buzzards swoop in, scaring away any little titmouses and nuthatches that may timidly ventured in for a snack.

I have tried millet and cracked corn and safflower blend. The result? Bad-luck albatross-type birds, disease-carrying pigeons, bossy blackbirds—cawing and swooping around the yard. What have I done to attract these large, ugly, evil birds?

Sometimes I feel like I’m in a bad Alfred Hitchcock movie as The Birds in my trees lay in wait . . . biding their time . . . waiting for the day when I let my guard down so they can take over my house, my yard, my bird feeder . . . and make it their own.

I'll admit I've been tempted to just shoot a long-horned steer, throw its rotting carcass into the yard, and let the evil birds have their way with it, ripping and tearing its flesh with their beaks and talons. The heck with those tiny little thistle seeds at $6.50 a pound.

ANOTHER PAIR BITES THE DUST

Doesn't it seem like I just got a new pair of walking shoes? But in looking back, it’s actually been a year (see “Mama’s Got a New Pair of Shoes,” June 27, 2008). I figure that I got over 1,000 miles out of my current pair of Nikes (conservative estimate of walking 350 days last year, average of 3 miles a day—over a 1,000 miles). I think that’s about the equivalent of walking from Alexandria to Denver, Colorado—well, spread out over a year, which isn’t nearly as impressive.

Anyway, one day last week, I looked down at the toe of my shoe and my sock was staring back at me, so I knew it was time.

Time for a New Pair of Shoes

Luckily, my daughter Shannon is home this weekend, so I’ll make her come with me again. That way, I don’t have to make intelligent conversation with the athletic-shoe sales associate. She can talk jock-appropriate shoe analysis with him while I just decide what color I like best.

Shannon and I went down to Glenwood yesterday and did one of my favorite walks: along Lake Minnewaska. Just park your car at the public beach and start walking west along the path. Our goal was Torgy’s Restaurant, two miles away. Much of the walk is right along the lake with occasional landmarks—Lakeside Ballroom, the city park, the public boat landing, Hunt’s Resort, Waskawood RV Camp and Marina. But eventually you find yourself at Torgy’s where you can stop and rest awhile on the outdoor deck—or you can do like we did yesterday, just turn around and walk the two miles back to the public beach.

Walking by Beautiful Lake Minnewaska in Glenwood

I love Glenwood. It makes me glad to be a Minnesotan in the summer!

HOBO TRAIL

My favorite part of the day is when I go for my 2 to 4 mile walk. It cleans the cobwebs out of my brain and lifts my spirits. Today I decided to head for the Hobo Trail. I don’t know the real name of the trail, but for 35 years we’ve called it the Hobo Trail. It starts at the Depot Restaurant (formerly the railroad depot in Alexandria) and winds its way around Lake Agnes to City Park.

Local lore says that back in the Depression, the rail-riding hobos would get off the boxcars at the depot and then walk on a dirt path around Lake Agnes to the public park where they would camp out at night before looking for work in the morning. There aren’t any more hobos riding the rails and the trail has been paved with asphalt, but I like to believe that the hobo spirits still walk the trail.

All the locals know the trail well. But if you’re a tourist, you probably won’t be able to figure it out without a little help. So here’s how you access the Hobo Trail:

First, park your car on 2nd and Broadway, right next to the statue of Big Ole and the Depot Restaurant.

Face east and take the trail on the left, not the right (that’s the Central Lakes Trail), and start to follow it around the lake.
Notice the turtle pond on the right side of the path . . . . . . and the lake on the left. Keep following the path around the lake.
Here is where the tourists lose heart and turn around because the trail leads to the rear parking lot of the local Mexican restaurant. Don't give up; just keep going and turn left.
Follow the alley, past the dumpsters, and through another parking lot.
Eventually, you will find the link to the Hobo Trail that leads to City Park.
Follow the trail along the lake.
Finally, you will arrive at the park near the bandstand.
You can walk all the way out to the point separating Lakes Agnes and Henry.
You can even see all the way across the lake to where you started, over by the Depot Restaurant.
Today, the only customers at the City Park swimming beach are two duck families.
Nobody’s at the fishing pier today.
I love the Hobo Trail. It’s not a very long walk—two miles total, out and back. But it’s a little bit of Alexandria’s history, kept alive by those hobo spirits and those of us who like to occasionally take a walk with them.

SEVERIN AND OTTIN

(Another story from my 90ish parents, told in the nursing home.)

One of the strangest stories in my mother’s family was the tale of her great uncles, Severin and Ottin Sletvold. By the time my parents were born in 1917 and 1918, Ottin had already passed away; but Severin was still a fixture in the community until his death in 1942.

Severin and Ottin were a set of identical twins born to my mother’s great-great grandfather, Ole Sletvold. They were born in 1851 in Sletvold Nordre, Rommedalsvegg, Strange Hedmark, Norway—the seventh and eighth children of Ole and his wife. That, in fact, is how they got their names: the Norwegian words for “7” and “8” are “syv” and “atte,” so the twins’ parents just picked names that were similar to those numbers, Severin and Ottin.

When the family immigrated to the United States, Ole homesteaded a farm in what became Oscar Township, which contained 75 percent Norwegian immigrants. There, as young boys, Severin and Ottin discovered that the untapped muskrat population was a source of cash money, so they spent much of their boyhood trapping and selling muskrat pelts, saving as much money as they could.

By the time Severin and Ottin were young men, they had sold enough muskrat pelts to buy a farm together. In fact, they did everything together—including, it appears, falling for the same girl, Taaline Linner, who lived on a nearby farm.

Both of the twins wanted to marry Taaline. But since they had done all their courting together, the irresolute Taaline said she didn’t prefer one twin over the other and said she would marry either one. So Severin and Ottin decided to resolve the issue the same way they had resolved disagreements before: they arm wrestled for Taaline’s hand in marriage.

Ottin, although the younger at No. 8, won the arm wrestling challenge and married Taaline. Since the brothers owned the farm together, all three lived together in the same house anyway. (I asked my mother why so many Norwegian farmer bachelors lived with their married brothers, and she said that most men couldn’t afford to buy a farm on their own. So they teamed up with a brother to buy a farm. Usually, the more outgoing brother worked up enough courage to get married, while the shyer brother remained single. That was my mother’s theory anyway.)


Ottin and Taaline had several children (maybe 10 or so?). One of their children even went on to become a Minnesota State Senator.

As for Severin, he became one of the wealthier men around the Carlisle area. He lived very simply, and without a wife and children, was able to squirrel much of his money away. Men who wanted to get started in farming often came to Severin for a loan to buy land. During the “Dirty 30s” of the Dustbowl, when many of the men he had lent money to were no longer able to keep paying their mortgage, Severin ended up owning several foreclosed farms in addition to the farm he owned with his brother.



When Ottin was killed in 1909 (kicked by horse, my parents thought), Severin continued to live with Ottin’s family in the farm house, although there was never, according to my parents, any “funny business” between him and Taaline. Severin stood by the results of that arm wrestling contest when Ottin had won the hand of Taaline for life, fair and square.

IMITATING KURT VONNEGUT, JR.

I just finished reading Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and on page 215, he explains his writing style in the book: “ . . . I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out.” And then he added his own hand-drawn illustrations.

I thought I would try my hand at writing in the Vonnegut style. So here’s my impression of me, writing like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in Breakfast of Champions, giving every fact equal weight, leaving out nothing:

Margaret suspected her cupboards were empty. She hadn’t shopped in weeks. But she walked into her kitchen anyway, certain there must be a scrap of food somewhere. Her cupboards had never been entirely bare because this was America.

She knew there were starving children in foreign countries like the Philippines, which is an island nation in the Pacific where rice and pinakbet are the staples foods. However, this was Midland City, Illinois, where there were very few starving children. And even those children have access to the Midland Community Food Bank where various service groups like the Elks, the Rotary Club, and the Knights of Columbus at St. Joachim Catholic Church regularly raised money to replenish the shelves with canned food like Franco American Spaghettios and boxes of General Mills Cheerios.

General Mills was recently told they couldn’t advertise “lowers cholesterol” because it makes Cheerios sound like a drug.

Margaret opened the first cupboard door, and reached for an open box of stale crackers on the second shelf. They were Kellogg’s All Bran crackers. Kellogg’s is an American company which is the world’s leading producer of cereal and other grain-based convenience foods. Kellogg’s has been in operation since 1906 when the two Kellogg brothers first discovered how to make cold cereal by dropping small bits of rolled grain on a hot, flat stovetop. The All Bran crackers that she found were a relatively new addition to the Kellogg’s line of convenience foods, and the box looked like this:

There, that’s me, writing like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in Breakfast of Champions. All information is included and all facts are given equal weight. Plus I illustrated it, just like Vonnegut did.

Now the only thing left to do is wait for the publishers to come knocking on my door. After all, Vonnegut died in 2007, so the literary world is bound to be looking for his replacement.

WIFE CALCULATOR

It’s early Saturday morning, and Tom is preparing to take off on a two-day fishing trip, his 800th fishing trip of the 2009 season. This is astounding because walleye season only opened on May 9, and already he has fished a total of 73,052 hours.

The reason I know this is because I have calculated it on my official “Wife Calculator.”

A Wife Calculator cannot be purchased in the Electronics Department at Target. It cannot even be purchased on the Hewlitt-Packard web site, which mistakenly boasts that the world’s most powerful calculator is the HP-33, a programmable scientific calculator for computing statistics, base-N, mathematical functions and fractions. No, the HP-33 pales in comparison to the power of the Wife Calculator.

In addition to adding up fishing hours, the Wife Calculator can also rapidly compute the number of hours spent playing golf, watching sports on television, or playing spider solitaire, while simultaneously creating an inverse ratio to time spent doing household chores carefully handwritten by above-mentioned wife on a lengthy to-do list. (For example: if household chores are X and leisure activities are Y, then X:Y is 1:653.)

It’s all very complicated.

The best thing about a Wife Calculator is that it never needs to be purchased. As soon as a woman signs her name on a marriage certificate in the presence of two reliable witnesses and a member of the clergy, the Wife Calculator is simultaneously, biologically implanted in her brain by an act of nature similar to a lightning strike on steroids.

It’s a miracle.

The garage door just went up and I heard the sound of a Ford Explorer engine starting. This quickly triggered a chemical reaction in my brain that jump-started the Wife Calculator, which immediately whirled into action. And that’s how I know that Tom just left on his 800th fishing trip to begin his 73,053rd hour of fishing.

UNCLE CARL

(Another story from the nursing home, told by my 90ish parents.)

My dad was raised in a household with what he describes as “three fathers.” His own father Albert was, of course, the biological father. But until my dad was ten years old, his grandfather Martin also lived with the family, so he was the second disciplinarian. And the third disciplinarian, and by far the toughest of the three, was “Uncle,” my dad’s bachelor Uncle Carl, who also lived with the family until his death in 1947.

Grandpa Martin had been married twice (his first wife died at the age of 24, leaving him with two children, Johanna and Helmer, ages 4 and 1). Martin remarried three years later, and my dad’s Uncle Carl, born in 1870, was the oldest of this second batch of six children. My grandfather Albert was Martin’s youngest child (born in 1885), so Uncle Carl out-ranked his much more easy-going baby brother by 15 years.

Photo taken in the late 1800s: (Front Row, Seated) Grandpa Martin, Lena, Albert (my grandfather in big bowtie), Johanna, Henry. (Back Row, Standing) Ella, Ole, Helmer, and Carl.

My dad grew up with Uncle Carl in the house, even sharing a bedroom with him until my dad got married in 1941. My dad remembers Uncle Carl as grumpy and tough. In his younger years, Uncle Carl had been active in the community—a musician and officer in the Carlisle Band and a regular churchgoer. However in 1900, his younger brother Ole married Clara, a girl from a nearby farm. Uncle Carl, who never married, rarely left the farm again after that. My dad believes from what he heard growing up that the 30-year-old Carl had wanted to marry Clara himself, and his brother’s marriage to her caused him to withdraw from the outside world to a narrow life on the farm.

It was tough growing up in a household where three men felt they had the right to discipline and raise Albert’s children. While my dad’s father Albert was good-natured and easy-going, Uncle was hard on the children. Most of the time, Albert tolerated his older brother Carl’s ways because he was a hard worker and was especially good with handling horses. But occasionally, when things got too bad, Pa would step in and intervene on his children’s behalf.

Even though Uncle rarely left the farm, he was always curious about people in the community. If the family attended a community function, Uncle would pump them for information when they got home. When the children in my dad’s family got older, Uncle was very critical of his brother and sister-in-law for letting the children “run too much.” He felt that his nieces and nephews were entirely too free to come and go when there was plenty of work to do at home.

Uncle Carl would get grumpy with Albert, too. Once when he was upset with his younger brother, Carl threatened that no one in the family would get his share of the farm. Calmly, Albert just shrugged and said Carl could do as he pleased. But he pointed out that if Carl died without a will, the family farm would have to be sold to split the inheritance with all of his brothers and sisters, since Carl had no children of his own. That gave Carl something to think about because he was fiercely loyal to that farm. Shortly after, he drew up a will that made sure his share of the farm stayed intact with Albert’s family.

My dad remembers that in all the years he worked side by side with Uncle Carl, the man gave him only one compliment. When my dad got married in 1941and moved to his own house, grumpy Uncle Carl reluctantly conceded that my dad “had been a pretty good worker.” My dad laughed when he told that, knowing that this compliment had only been given because he was safely moving a half a mile away.

Uncle Carl died of a heart attack in 1947 at the age of 77, and yes, despite his threats, he did leave the family farm to Albert. This is the land that my dad and his brother still own in Carlisle Township.

LOVE AFFAIR

Colbie was as glad to see me as I was to see her. I really think she remembered me from the time we spent together in March. When Colbie met me at the door, she hugged me! (Really! She hugged me!) She is wonderful, delightful, and totally perfect. Is there any other feeling on earth that can compare to the feelings of being a grandmother? Her spit-up is inspired—her poopy diapers are works of art. Her smile melts my heart. She laughs at my jokes and listens intently when I sing an off-key, lyric-deficient song. She looks thrilled when I pick her up after a nap—like she’s happy it’s me. I am completely in love with Colbie.




And I now know why we grandmas have all those wrinkles and that loose skin on our jowls and necks. It’s so our grandbabies can grab us by the face and tell us, “I’m so glad you came to visit me!”

STAND-BY MODE

I've got about five minutes to write this entry before I get into my car, head down for the Twin Cities, and hop a plane to Phoenix. Get ready, Colbie--Grandma's coming!!

Since I'm traveling light and not taking along my laptop (desperate grandmas just do carry-on bags so that they can get to their grandchildren quicker), this may be the last post for awhile. In the meantime, I have got one of those 1950s TV test patterns for you to look at. Don't give up on me; this blog is just in the "stand-by" mode until I return. With pictures, I'm sure.

Don't touch that dial. I'll be back before you know it.

LILACS AND MOURNING

I admit I get a little crazy in the spring, oohing and ahhing over every little proof that winter is gone and won’t be coming back until next November. I get excited when I see green grass; I turn cartwheels when I spot returning robins and finches.

You may have been misled to believe that the culmination of this springtime fervor was Pink Day when the flowering crab tree bloomed—that now I could stop being excited about spring. Wrong. You forgot about Lilac Day when the row of lilac bushes next to our house begins to flower. It becomes another day to get the camera and corral anyone within the sound of my voice to line up for a photo shoot.

“Shannon!” I shout, grabbing my camera. “Stand in front of the lilacs!” She has lived around me long enough to know it’s useless to argue. So she stands in front of the lilacs. “Look happy!” I encourage, twisting to get the right sun angle. She squints directly into the sun and gamely tries to look happy in a lilac-sort of way. “Another one!” I urge, and this time I catch her unprepared, so her eyes are closed, trying to protect what’s left of her retinas. “One more,” I enthuse, and this time she strikes a pensive pose, trying to look like she’s recalling Walt Whitman’s poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloomed.” I think that’s what she was doing anyway—either that or trying to figure out how to escape. Four shots later, she steps away from the lilac bushes, all shot out.

“Tom!” I call to my reluctant husband, suddenly breaking into a sweat of photographic fervor. “Stand next to Shannon.” He stands still for only two shots, and then he’s had enough. After almost 36 years of marriage, he doesn’t have to pretend to be polite any more. Both shots show father and daughter bathed in direct sunlight coming in from an unflattering angle. I really need to take a photography class.

Tom takes the camera from me. “Now YOU stand next to Shannon,” he orders bossily. Oddly, when I want people to be in pictures, I sound cheerful and persuasive. Tom just sounds cranky. He takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r, as usual, trying to get the shot framed just right. By the time he finally snaps the pictures, we impatient posers are feeling more than a little hostile toward the photographer.

Shannon moves away from the bushes. “Now you two stand next to the lilacs,” she commands, reaching for the camera. Ah, the second generation of camera Nazis has begun. Tom sighs and moves next to me. I force him to stand closer to me, even though he doesn’t really want to.

By the time we’re done, we have taken eleven pictures of various combinations of the three of us, standing in front of the lilacs. Eleven.

I now know how Walt Whitman felt when he wrote the incredibly mournful, “When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloomed.” He probably wrote it right after he had finished with a family photo session.

MEMORIAL DAY

Memorial Day was first celebrated over 140 years ago when following the Civil War, freed slaves decided to exhume Union soldiers’ bodies from a makeshift mass grave at the site of a former Confederate prison camp. They then reverently re-buried each soldier individually and put a fence around the graveyard, declaring it a Union military cemetery. Each year thereafter, flowers were put on the graves in memory of the sacrifice these soldiers had made in liberating the slaves. After World War II, the holiday was expanded to include honoring all American military casualties.

I’m not quite sure when Memorial Day became something a little different—a date that marks the beginning of the tourist season in Minnesota lake country, a day off from work, a day to cook hotdogs or brats on the grill, the weekend of the Indy 500. It became a day to pull the weeds around Great Aunt Matilda’s headstone, regardless of the fact that she was not a military casualty but merely a victim of old age.

So today, I’m putting out my flag and taking a minute to remember all those soldiers who died in the service of their country. As usual, we’ll go downtown at 10:15 a.m. and take in the Memorial Day parade. The most touching part for me is when the veterans march past in their uniforms (or at least their hats if the uniforms themselves don’t fit). There aren’t any World War II veterans marching any more. The few who are left ride in the backs of convertibles donated by the local Ford dealer. And even the Vietnam vets from my era are looking a little long in the tooth. Last year, a few Iraq war veterans joined in the parade. But there’s something about watching them all march down the street, keeping step with the high school marching band, that still makes me a little teary-eyed and proud.

Time to go put out my flag.

PINK DAY

Thursday started out to be a gloomy, cloudy day with a stiff northwest wind. I think that was why I didn’t realize right away that it was Pink Day.

Later that afternoon, maybe around 2 p.m., the clouds started disappearing and the sun made its way out. The temperature climbed and the sky was almost completely blue when I started my four miler at about 3:30 p.m. I hadn’t gone a half a block when it hit me: it was Pink Day—the day the flowering crab trees in our neighborhood burst out in their pink blossoms, announcing that it is finally spring.

We have a flowering crab tree right outside our living room window, too, that on Pink Day at sunset makes the whole living room take on a rosy glow. Over the years on Pink Day, I grab whomever happens to be around and stand them in front of the flowering crab tree for a picture. Sometimes it’s one of my children—or maybe two. Sometimes it’s a cat. Sometimes it’s one of my children holding a cat.

Pink Day 1991

I can remember several years when Pink Day came in early May when I was still teaching. I always resented the waste of all those pink blossoms at home, peaking out, while I was stuck inside a building at work. But this year, of course, I am able to maximize the pinkness. Retired people have all the luck.

Pink Day 2008

Halleluiah! Pink Day is here! Luckily, I have a "kid" home for Memorial Day weekend—now all I need is my camera and a cat!

Pink Day 2009

HIRED MEN

(Story from the nursing home, told by my 90ish parents, during a visit on 5/21/09)

My mother had six brothers--four older and two younger. Even the largest, busiest farms in Carlisle couldn’t keep that many boys gainfully occupied, so my mother remembers that neighboring farmers would hire her brothers to work for them as “hired men.” Even though they were called hired men, most were actually just teenagers, anywhere from age 15 and up, when they went to work and live (room and board included with their wages) at another farm in the community.

My dad remembers that my mother’s brother Fred was hired to come and work for his family in about the late 1920s. As a little girl, my mother worshipped her older brother Fred (as did her two younger brothers). Fred was ten years older than my mother, but he always took time for the little kids. Fred had a talent for drawing, and my mother remembers that he would draw pictures and tell stories to my mother and her brothers, Art and Otto. Sometimes on Sunday afternoon, when the horses weren’t working, Fred would take the little kids down to the barn and let them help brush and curry the horses, which they loved to do.

In those days, going to high school involved moving into town. So after Fred finished eighth grade, he decided he was done with schooling and stayed home to help farm. A few years later, my dad’s father, Albert, was struggling with some health problems involving his gallbladder and appendix. My mother’s brother Fred was hired to come and help out. Even with my dad’s family, Fred took time in the evenings for the little kids (Alice, Mildred, and Al). The same stories and drawings that had entertained his younger brothers and sister at home also entertained the little kids in my dad’s family.

My Mother’s Family ( approx. 1940): Back row: Art, Elmer, Otto, Clifford, Fred, Morrill. Front row: Lena (my mother), Emma, Edward, Clara.

My mother’s younger brother Otto was the hired man for my dad’s family at the time my parents were married in 1941. Otto had a little different nature than Fred. While Fred worked quietly and diligently, if Otto didn’t want to do something, he blurted right out that he didn’t want to. My dad remembers that Otto was helping build the new house that he and my mother would move into a few months after they were married. Otto’s job was to help dig the water cistern. Unfortunately, it had been a wet spring; the deeper Otto dug, the more he ran into sloppy, heavy mud. Finally, disgusted, he climbed out of that hole, threw down his shovel, and refused to go back down. So my dad finished digging the 12-foot deep cistern himself while Otto found something a little more glamorous to do. It’s hard to fire the hired man when he’s your brother-in-law.

My mother’s brother Clifford worked mostly for his grandfather, Frank. Grandpa Frank knew that Clifford loved animals. So one spring, instead of paying Clifford in cash, he gave him a ram—a male sheep—to raise. However, Clifford loved that buck so much that he made a pet out of it, and it roamed freely around the farmyard, just like a dog. My mother learned to be very wary of Clifford’s pet because it had a mean, mischievous streak. It would sneak up behind the children when they were bent over doing their chores or playing in the yard. Bam! The buck would butt them in the behind, toppling them over, and then run away. For a year, Clifford kept that naughty pet ram until finally it grew to adulthood and he sold it. His brothers and sister were very glad to see that ram go.

Every family and every generation had their “hired men” and “hired girls,” usually in their teens or early twenties. They weren’t needed at home but were the right age to go to work for someone else until they were old enough to get married and have homes and farms of their own. And many times, the “hired man” would end up marrying one of the farmer’s daughters or the “hired girl” would catch the eye of the farmer’s son.

SHATTERING THE VINEGAR STEREOTYPE

Before yesterday, my vision of vinegar was the picture to the right. On cleaning day, I drag out the gallon jug of white distilled vinegar, pour it into a bucket with some warm water and ammonia, and then start mopping the kitchen floor. You know—vinegar. It cleans windows and ceramic tile and makes dill pickles taste like dill pickles.

I’m not totally ignorant. Once in awhile, I’ve run into a recipe calling for a couple of teaspoons of vinegar or a salad dressing that requires a half a cup or so. However, I was under the impression vinegar was vinegar and that it all basically tasted the same. Wrong again (although that's nothing new--third time today).

Yesterday, my sister and I drove out into the country about four miles from Long Prairie and found the Leatherwood Vinegary (think of “winery” but they make vinegar instead). Vinegar, I found out during our tour, is fruit juice, like grape or apple, or wine to which a vinegar starter culture has been added. Then the vinegar maker needs a dark, warm place and lots of patience while the vinegar does its thing. (Obviously, this is the simple visitor’s impression of all the skill and chemical reactions taking place in the process.)

At the Leatherwood Vinegary, the vintners (not sure what to call them since vintners make wine—but the “vin” at the beginning seemed to fit vinegar makers, too) gave us a tasting session. While I don’t remember all the flavors, we started our tasting with some of the fruit-flavored ones: raspberry, chokecherry, apple, papaya. The herb-infused vinegars were also interesting: basil, tarragon, garlic, catnip (yes, catnip!), oregano—all the way off the pack-a-wallop charts to horseradish and jalapeno pepper. We were given little “medicine dropper” samples so we could find our favorites.

Leatherwood Vinegary is actually the home of the vintners, Nancy and Ron, so appointments and tour reservations are necessary. I guess they don’t want you showing up when they’re in the shower. If you twist an arm, they might even let you walk the path down to the Long Prairie River which runs past their property (watch for the woodticks and poison ivy, but well worth the walk). But for sure they’ll let you see the free-range chickens that lay the green eggs (no ham), the herb gardens, and the dozens of fruit plants and trees. And if you’re lucky, you might even get a glass of homemade red currant wine served with homemade bread and hummus, sitting in the gazebo next to the koi pond.

I’ll never look at vinegar the same way again.