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Funeral Home & Cremation Services

952-474-9595

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952-443-9888

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

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Call Nan Emmer.  612-702-2020

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8 First Street in Waconia.  952-442-2885

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Call 952-443-2121.

MVT Excavating

No job is too small.  952-446-9341

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Specialized assisted living for those

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Victoria.  952-908-2215

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The Victoria

GAZETTE

From the Editor

         I drove home to the farm one April Sunday when Allan was down south in Lanesboro turkey hunting with our son Nick.  It makes me smile to imagine Allan and Nick swapping turkey calls and turkey decoys and falling asleep against a tree, cooking at the campfire and then golfing together in the afternoon, drinking beer and eating popcorn from the microwave.  It’s neither totally primitive nor totally upscale when the guys are turkey hunting in the spring.  It’s just plain good.

         I could have stayed home alone here in Victoria and worked peacefully on the Gazette or invited some friends for supper or caught up on laundry or killed a little time shopping at the Mall of America, or fallen asleep reading, but my mom and dad kept dancing into my head like sugar plum fairies at Christmas time, and so I called to talk a while.  After a few minutes Mom asks, “What are you doing today?”

         In less than a half hour I was on the road home, no packing necessary.  It’s only a two and a half hour drive to the farm in southwestern Minnesota where I was born and raised, so I only needed to get in the car and steer in the right direction.  Soon I’m in Lyon County.

         As I turn west out of Ghent, I drive past my Grandma and Grandpa Claeys’ place, where my dad was born and raised, and where my Uncle Jim and Aunt Julie have lived since they married over 50 years ago.  The big white house brings back memories from my childhood, when Grandma had furniture on the spacious front porch and she rocked me on her lap and hummed Brahm’s Lullaby even though I thought I was a big girl.  Last summer Allan and I drove home for Uncle Jim’s 80th birthday party.  Maybe you’ve seen the pictures online in Sue’s Album.

         Then I drive past the Jennen farm and recall that my Great Uncle Joe Jennen was electrocuted on that place during a storm.  He was young and had a wife and little boy.  My mother’s mother was a Jennen, and I became friends with a cousin, Father Ferdinand Jennen, through our visits to Belgium.  It used to be called “the old country.”  Father Jennen had been receiving the Gazette and writing letters to me since 1997, when we first visited in Hasselt with my parents.  He died in January of this year at the age of 87.

         Then I see Grandma and Grandpa Opdahl’s farm and a flood of other memories take hold.  This is where my mother was born and raised, and I stayed there with my little sisters when my parents went to Montana to buy cattle from the Indians.  I smelled bacon in the morning and Grandma fried lots and lots of eggs.  Aunt Sharlene and Uncle Mike and Uncle Dan were still kids when I was little.  Grandma raised chickens and Grandpa liked sheep.

         So far it’s been three miles from that left turn out of Ghent, which means it’s time to turn left again -- some people call it south -- onto the gravel road that runs past Mom and Dad’s farm which they’ve called home since 1947, the year they were married.  I drive much slower than the speed limit on this road because I don’t want to shake the guts out of my car and I don’t want to eat dust.  Nobody else is coming or going so I drive down the middle.

         I see home almost immediately.  It’s not even a whole mile away.  Looks good.  You can see some of the grain bins through the trees.  The mailbox at the end of the driveway stands where it always has.  The baby evergreen trees, rows of them, have grown up to be old trees now.  Tulips are blooming and colorful and there’s wire fencing around them.  Darn rabbits.  I make a circle in the yard to park right up near the front door, under the elm tree that Dad butchered a few years ago and it sprouted new branches and leaves and came back to life.

         Dad steps out of the house and we say hello and hug.  I call him “Papa” sometimes.  We walk into the house together and it smells like dinner.  Mmmm.  Farmers always call the noon meal dinner.  Mom walks over from in front of the stove and we hug, even choke up a little.  Then she pours the coffee and we visit while the gravy gets made and the potatoes smashed. 

         “The boys got the crops in.  Not sure what they’re all doing today.  Jake’s baby came three weeks early.  Isn’t the name Olivia cute?  Lucy’s middle name is Elizabeth.  Are you coming home for Lindsay’s shower?  Bernie’s looking forward to the day after the wedding.  Took us three days to get home from Texas.  We like our new car.”

         The beef roast is delicious and I take second helpings of everything.  After dinner I walk through the house and the familiar rooms.  I see my parents and their friends square dancing in the dining room.  I see Dad and my brothers and sisters arranged on the floor in the living room like corndogs on a cookie sheet.  I see three baby cribs in Mom and Dad’s old bedroom; I’m in one of them.

         “Everything looks the same,” I say as I walk back into the kitchen.  I like when some things stay the same.

May 2010