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Shoe shopping

My wife and I recently went shoe shopping. As with most married couples, this meant that she shopped while I tagged along. She is quite sneaky regarding such things. I was lured into a superstore with hints that we might visit the power tool department only to find myself wandering through a maze of shoes. The stacks of footwear were high enough to tickle the bellies of passing clouds. “Where are we going?” I asked in my best non-whiny manner. “Stop your whining!” my wife replied. “You sound an electric coffee mill. We’re here because we both ...

The pessimist farmer

Farmers are the original eternal optimists. Indeed, it was a hailed-out farmer who first coined the phrase “Just wait until next year!” and not, as legend has it, a diehard sports fan. Optimism is an essential component of a farmer’s character. Perhaps the most pessimistic farmer I ever knew was an old, tough-as-nails bachelor named Martin Rud. Dad owned some equipment with Martin, so I saw a lot of our next-door neighbor while growing up on our family’s dairy farm. Martin often dropped by to share the latest gossip and had an uncanny knack for arriving right when we ...

Sharing the gift of reunions

My Magical Mystery Nostalgia Tour has come to an end. It’s time to return to the present time. Which isn’t that great. But it’s all we got. Pam accuses me of being a serial nostalgic. She’s right. The longer-ago memories are, the more enjoyable they are to retrieve. One definition of nostalgia: “A wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.” Heck yeah, I’m nostalgic! The approach of my 50th class ...

Cities of all sizes facing budget challenges

Recently I was able to connect with other city administrators both near Marshall and across the State of Minnesota. One consistent message was the challenge of finding enough revenue to provide services — whether it be providing public safety, maintaining infrastructure like streets or keeping up with the expectations of the public like park and recreation facilities that improve quality of life. All cities are required to prepare and adopt an annual budget. By law in Minnesota, the fiscal year of a city and all its funds must be the calendar year. Thus, for cities, a budget is one ...

Farmers market stirs childhood memories of gardening

At this time of year I always get a craving, one that reminds me of growing up on Marguerite Avenue. My family had a set of gardens in the backyard. They were mostly small flower gardens but we had one large vegetable garden below the hill. At this time of year the garden would be producing many green beans and tomatoes. The lettuce had grown out, but the potatoes and carrots were ready to dig up in about another month. Mom had several recipes based on our garden produce. Some of my favorites were a lettuce salad with eggs and bacon, buttered green beans, sliced tomatoes, and pot ...

Legends of the Iron Range

Editor’s note: Jerry is taking some time off. Here is one of his past columns from his Oldies But Goodies file. Mesabi is the Ojibwa word for giant. Mesabi is also the name given to a range of iron-rich hills in northern Minnesota, knolls that the Ojibwa believed held a sleeping giant. Some years ago, my wife and I made a foray to northern Minnesota to see about sleeping giants and other Iron Range legends. First on our list was the town of Bemidji where stands humungous statues of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe. Being a farm kid, I had to examine Babe up close to ...