Huber

Funeral Home & Cremation Services

952-474-9595

Pediatric Rehabilitation Clinic.

Occupational Therapy.  Speech Therapy.

952-443-9888

Victoria’s Corner Bar.  Nightly Specials and Menus.  952-443-9944

Buying or Selling Victoria?

Call Nan Emmer.  612-702-2020

Weinzierl

Jewelers

8 First Street in Waconia.  952-442-2885

Preschool and Childcare in Victoria. 

Call 952-443-2121.

MVT Excavating

No job is too small.  952-446-9341

The Key

The Key to advertisers

in the Victoria Gazette. 

Located at www.VictoriaGazette.com.

952-443-2808

Specialized assisted living for those

with memory challenges. 

Victoria.  952-908-2215

Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box:

Headlines

and bylines

Front Page

Feature Story

From the

Editor

Addie’s

Drawing

Letters

to the Editor

Victoria

Moments

Hook

Line & Sinker

Calendar

of Events

Click here to

Advertise

Email

the Gazette

Return to

Home Page

Order

paper Gazette

Notes and

Quotes

The Scoop

at City Hall

Home Page

The Victoria

GAZETTE

         It takes me too long to do the 10, 20, and 30-years ago columns for the Gazette each month.  Maybe you know that I go through past issues of the paper to do those columns, to identify what was going on in Victoria during the particular year and month under the microscope 10, 20, and 30 years ago.  And I find myself getting stuck reading every page as though I'm seeing it for the first time.  How does that happen!

         Getting stuck in old Gazettes is not unlike getting stuck in old family albums.  Once you start turning the pages, and reminiscing, you can't walk away from it very easily.  You've got to be careful or you'll kill a whole morning or afternoon in a very small corner of the world.  And then who's going to make supper?

         I'm no longer embarrassed by my editorials and various other writings from the past.  Heck, 30 years ago I was a child.  I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  And then when I was a teenager, I didn't measure things with the mind of maturity but with mixed emotions and peer pressures.

         As I grew into young adulthood I had many opinions and little knowledge.  Now that I'm a grandma, I've got a few gray hairs at the temple and I see the world in black and white -- just like today's Gazette!  You probably know the answer to what's black and white and red all over.

         It's good for us to read those columns every month from 10, 20, and 30 years ago.  They give us a perspective that we otherwise wouldn't have.  It's good to be reminded of where we've been, where we are today, and where we could be going.  Wherever we go, there we are!

         The comment that led me to this musing appears in the City Scoop pages of this issue of the Gazette.  It came from Dr. Chad Lorenz, the owner of a new business in downtown Victoria.  About Victoria he said, "It's a gorgeous town."  Those who live or visit in Victoria today, or simply drive through, would easily agree.  It is a gorgeous town. 

         First of all, it's more lush and green than it's ever been -- greener golf course, greener ballfields and greener parks and lawns and spring rains that don't quit. 

         Secondly, there are nice paved black streets everywhere and decorative street lights and hanging baskets and boulevard trees not to mention an attractive downtown bridge with stonework and wrought iron rail, replacing the one Mike Wartman called the Old Black Bridge.

         Thirdly, there are several new buildings and businesses in downtown Victoria, substantial in quality, most of them adorned in part or in whole with brick or stone, pleasing to the eye and inviting to shoppers homegrown and visiting. 

         Fourthly, the neighborhoods, old and new, in and around the lakes and parks and ponds of Victoria, are as neat and nice as their entrance monuments.

         But Victoria hasn't always been a gorgeous town.  It surely wasn't that way 20, 30, and 40 years ago, which is about the time I arrived in Victoria -- 40 years ago.  When I'm paging through old Gazettes, I'm most in awe at the many positive changes that have since occurred in downtown Victoria.  I don't take these changes for granted because, as a 25-year former member of the Victoria Chamber of Commerce, "cleaning up downtown Victoria" was often a topic of discussion and number one goal.

         Seems like yesterday that Tuffy's Tavern needed new siding and then it became the Old Town Saloon and was drenched in barn red paint.  And the patio door that was newly installed on an outside wall of the second level never did get a deck.

         Seems like yesterday that the overhead door and back doors of the old wood storage shed behind the lumber store needed paint and never got it and I didn't understand it because I often bought paint at that very store for my own house.

         Seems like yesterday that the Braunworth hardware store became Sidco 4x4 and I drove by the monster wheels and greasy equipment parked alongside the worn building every single day and there wasn't even a sidewalk to keep a pedestrian out of the mud.

         Seems like yesterday that I dropped by the old Victoria Cafe on Thursdays for ribs and kraut and the building got gradually worse looking as the years went by and it came to pass that nothing could help it except demolition.

         I'm always compelled to re-read the feature stories in those old Gazettes, stories that tell about the lives of Victoria people, many who lived here over 100 years ago.  The old-timers that I interviewed (may they be resting in peace) were always willing to talk about the lives of their parents and  grandparents -- the homesteaders -- as well as their own lives.  I suspect that there's no more comprehensive history of Victoria and its people anywhere than is written and recorded in these past 30-plus volumes of the Victoria Gazette.

         And so it takes me a long time to do those 10, 20, and 30-years ago columns each month because I get stuck in them and then Allan has to make supper.

July 2011

Text Box: From the Editor