Join me for a little lunch. Or something. Sometimes.
To know us is to love us.
We didn’t have jewels in our family but we had buttons. And Verne Gagne.
Artist, architect, musician, journalist, poet, naturalist, medieval calligrapher, granite artisan, historian. His friends called him Glanny.
There were no bad bunnies in Stearns County.
It’s not easy to find a fairy cross rock.
We listened to the rustle of grasses, the leaves in the trees, the distant traffic. But after a few days I realised there was no birdsong.
I didn’t bake a single cookie in December. Not one.
All families have secrets. As people get older or pass away, the secrets come to light. Like Grandma Lena’s.
It’s the town that welcomes you with a smile, and a cinnamon roll at Charlie’s Cafe.
We creatures of the earth shouldn’t eat each other’s lips. That’s my firm view.
Some things change, some stay the same.
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!
