Join me for a little lunch. Or something. Sometimes.
None of it was perfect, but what is?
Minnesotans understand a funnel cloud, a menacing sky, the gusts of wind that mean business.
You inspired me to buy a sausage maker, which I never ever used. As if I would, without you.
All families have secrets. As people get older or pass away, the secrets come to light. Like Grandma Lena’s.
Some things change, some stay the same.
I’d forgotten about hat hair.
When you have many children, it’s easy to forget one at Christmas. It hurts if you’re the forgotten one.
Collinwood, home to the Collins family, features gothic architecture and many candles in Dark Shadows Blue.
We creatures of the earth shouldn’t eat each other’s lips. That’s my firm view.
You’d be crazy to cross Mr Smith’s garden. But one night I had to.
Things were being moved. Things were being eaten.
Lena and Mina were my grandmothers – Stearns County, Minnesota women who grew up and raised families in small towns around the Lake Wobegon Trail. Born in the USA, they spoke German and had German accents. As did my parents, who spoke only German until they went to school. As do some of my cousins, who have never lived anywhere but Stearns County. We’re quirky folks, like those in Garrison Keillor’s fictional Stearns town of Lake Wobegon. I’m Laurie Hilsgen, and if you’re reading this, you might be Wobegonian, too. Let’s celebrate our loony ways. Oh ja!
