We’re at Bunker Hills Regional Park for the next 4 nights, about 15 minutes away from my brother’s place in Fridley where the family reunion takes place on Saturday.
On the way here from Detroit Lakes, we drove by the 2-room school (see pix) I attended for 8 years, visited the graveyard where my folks and 2 brothers are buried, and also stopped at the farmhouse where I grew up. The old house is still standing and is occupied so I just took a couple pix from the road.
In the picture, you’ll notice that the front porch has a roof over it and a window just above. That window is in the upstairs bedroom where my brothers and I slept. It is also the window through which I peed on many a cold winter’s night - rather than venture out into the frigid night air to the outhouse, risking frostbite on my delicate parts. It didn’t do the window screen any good but it sure made me feel a lot better. I was always afraid my Dad would notice the yellow streak in the snow on the porch roof but he never said anything.
The farmhouse is about 7 miles SE of Perham, MN. I spent my first 18 years there – in servitude to several hundred cows, sheep, chickens and hogs. All summer long it was make hay while the sun shines (and corn and oats and wheat and soy beans), milk cows when the sun came up, milk ‘em again before the sun went down. And then, all winter long, all those critters ate all that perfectly good produce and just turned it all into crap. We’re not talking about nicely shaped individual bovine pies here. Uh-uh! We’re talking major crap, tons of crap, mountains of crap, wall to wall crap, knee deep crap, head to toe crap. Guess who got to fork, shovel, haul and spread crap. Yessiree, those were the days.
Perham’s main claim to fame nowadays is Barrel of Fun potato chips. The next town down the line is New York Mills, the home of Lund boats. And then comes Wadena, which was torn up a few days ago by a tornado; see pix of the destruction.
Further south, we lunched at the Main Street Café in Sauk Centre, the home of Sinclair Lewis who wrote the book Main Street, wherein he described the town and some of its citizens. Everything’s Main Street there: Main Street Salon, Main Street Liquor, Main Street Motel, Main Street Dog Pound. There’s just no end to the imagination, originality and creativity of mid-America! Makes a man proud.
Rats! I was making comments and went to google maps to see the parts of MN you are speaking of, but when I came back my comments were gone with the wind. However, I do know more than I did before about Perham & locale.
ReplyDeleteI've heard you can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy. Probably means you'd still pee out the windows if given a chance. I won't mention the crap.
My friend & walking buddy Diane is from Taunton, MN and goes back there every year. It's near Marshall, south of you. They were a farming family, too.
The school building looks well -kept: is it still used as a school?
It's very poignant to visit your roots; I hope you have good memories and a great time being with your family. I hope Patti isn't too overwhelmed by y'all.