17 Years Plus One Day

We had a lovely time down in Southeastern Minnesota this weekend. We stayed at the Wenneson Inn in Peterson, MN which is between Rushford and Lanesboro. Peterson and Lanesboro were untouched by the floods of last weekend, Rushford was pretty much decimated. Peterson is smack dab in the middle of bluff country. It is very pretty down there. It is also very different down there. Peterson is a town of 269 souls that does not have a convenience store/gas station. It does have a bar, a liquor store (Chiggy Liquors), one restaurant, a feed mill, two B&B's, a combination carwash laundromat, and of course a Lutheran Church. Before you settle into where you're staying in Peterson, make sure you are prepared. If you don't have what you need, you can't get it in town, unless it is alcohol. The go to town for any sundries would be Rushford, but that town will be shut down for a while. The biggest town close by is Winona, which is about 25 miles to the north. The Twin Cities hardly qualify as a 24 hour city, but we've got 24 hour groceries and convenience stores. I have no idea where the closest all night store to Peterson is.

I noticed on the county roads leading to Peterson were filled with friendly drivers. I don't know how many times some stranger in an oncoming vehicle waved to us as we passed them. Either these folks are really friendly or else the most popular people in the county drive a car identical to our Crapmobile. I'm thinking they're just nice. Popular people wouldn't drive a Crapmobile. Or maybe they were being nice because they felt sorry for us.

We arrived at about 8 on Friday night, ate a quick meal and settled in. Saturday we got up and had breakfast with two retirement age couples from Wisconsin, although one of the couples had just relocated to Michigan. For some odd reason, the conversation turned to taxes, and one of the men complained how high the taxes were in Wisconsin, thus they moved to Michigan. He then went on to say that the taxes are so much lower in Minnesota than they are in Wisconsin. Sound familiar Minnesotans? This is the same crap the anti-tax crowd in Minnesota spouts about Wisconsin. Oh! Oh! all our businesses are moving to Wisconsin because the taxes are so much lower. Then he went on to complain about where all the tax money was going. Well in Wisconsin it's going toward keeping the tuition at UW much lower than at the UofM. In Minnesota it's going toward the hundreds of miles of bicycle trails that can be used by anyone for free. (In Wisc. the trails aren't paved and I guess you have to pay to use them.) If you want low tuition, bike trails, bridges not falling down, and help cleaning up after a flood, pay you damn taxes. If you don't want to pay them, shut up and don't expect any help. You can just friggin' lump it. Fortunately, I held my tongue and didn't start spouting off about this stuff.

We (well at least I was) were glad to get away from the table and that conversation. We loaded up the bikes and headed to Lanesboro. The Root River Trail had washed out between Peterson and Lanesboro, so if we wanted to do any kind of riding on the trail, we'd have to drive a bit. On the way out of town we stopped by the town museum. Closed. TOYH got out of the car and crossed the street to see if hours were posted. There was a note saying, "Leave a note," if you want to see the museum. As she was crossing back to get into the car, a local man struck up a conversation about the museum. They got to talking. Turns out the director of the museum has family in Rushford and was understandably busy over there. Don, the man who TOYH was talking to, was spending time at his gas station. "But," I hear you protest, "You said there are no gas stations in Peterson." I will clarify. There are no working gas stations in Peterson. Don had bought this old Mobil Oil station in town, and it was his vacation home. "Some people have a cabin on the lake," he said, "I have this old gas station." He invited us in and showed us his collection of old timey gas pumps and other oil industry memorabilia. He had made it a comfortable space, and was cleaning cobwebs from the basement/grease pit. He showed us the office where the previous owners literally wore half inch divots in the floor with their office chairs. The grease pit had been covered up so he had more living (and less dangerous) space. There was a little stairway leading down to the basement/grease pit. The man who runs the town museum gave Don some pictures. One was of the original owner at the station. Another was of the original owner's son who took over the business. There also was a picture of the owner with his daughter when she was very young, and who is now in her 80's and still lives across the street. Utterly charming. Being in the station took me back to Roger Peterson's Phillips 66 station in Cambridge, and going there with Opa to get gas on Saturdays.

We got to Lanesboro, hopped on our bikes, rode to Preston, had a lemonaide, didn't see Neil on his Preston Century, and biked back to Lanesboro.

After our ride we had a nice lunch and then walked around the town. We ended up at a store that sells wine from the local winery. Mmmm sounds interesting. The vinters there are making wine with different fruits and I was eager to sample some. I am so glad they gave out samples. I was all excited about the rhubarb wine. A man with a bulbous nose passing out the samples (and imbibing quite often himself) showed us the list of wines and said from top to bottom on the list the wines went from dry to sweet. Rhubarb was one notch above the middle, so I'm thinking maybe kind of a sweet dessert wine. Nope. Tasted like the dregs of a pitcher of Kool-Aid that had not been stirred at all. We ended up with a cranberry wine which was supposedly "dry" but is still a sweet dessert wine, and some sort of grape varietal. We stopped at the Lanesboro museum and looked around for about 45 minutes. I find these small town museums fascinating. Every small town has a story to tell, a story it wants others to know about, a story for it's townspeople to hold on to. It is very easy to be engrossed by these stories.

Back to Peterson we drive, taking the indirect route, getting waved at by the locals. When we got back to the B&B I hopped back on my bike for another ride. I took the Root River Trail as far West and as far East as I could go before being turned back by closures. I averaged 4mph faster without TOYH dragging me down. When I got back to the B&B, I found TOYH out on the deck chatting with a couple from Edina, Ron and Margaret. They both grew up in Rushford (met in 7th grade now married 45 years, I think) and were back to help Ron's brother dung out his house in Rushford. We talked and laughed for at least two and a half hours. It was great fun, because we didn't talk about taxes, politics or religion. We retired to our room with some food we picked up at the market in Lanesboro. We skipped eating at the local establishment, Judy's Country Kitchen, because we ate there on Friday night and were getting tired of restaurant food.

When we got up Sunday morning, Pam the proprieter let us in for breakfast early, and we got to chatting. She and her husband Barry have put the Wenneson up for sale, and I was curious about life in such a small town. She ended up telling us about one of the neighbor boys in the town. He's about 14 years old and a hard worker according to Pam. One night Barry was getting home at about 9pm when he noticed that there were 3 teenager types trying to break into Judy's Country Kitchen. Barry thought that one of them was the neigbhor boy, who happens to work at Judy's. Barry chased them away, but wasn't certain that they really were the local boys. So what do you do when you see an attempted burglary in Peterson? You call the Mayor of course. Barry explains the situation to him, and the Mayor takes care of it, apparently giving the neighbor boy a stern talking to. The whole story had a Mayberry-esqueness to it. Local boy (maybe) attempts to break into his place of employment at a very early hour, is seen and most likely recognized by a neighbor who quickly calls the Mayor to straighten the wayward kid out. If it truly was the neighbor boy trying to break in, the Mayor kept it pretty hush-hush. The kid still has his job at Judy's.