Spooky Night

The weather outside is frightful...perfect Halloween night~  Fog coats the air so thickly that I can’t see across Carmen’s Bay.  Trees are dripping moisture creating ample gloom for this spooky evening of Halloween.  My neighborhood is filled with witches stirring cauldrons, ghosts haunting the bushes, and black cats screeching.  

Halloween treats of fruit candies, and chocolate bars are piled in bowls near the door where smiling witches will greet the visiting goblins who mumble “Trick or Treat” through their masks.  I love seeing the little tykes coming to my door with their pumpkins and parents.  But I’m gracious to the teenagers who can’t give up the ghost and still want to trick or treat on Halloween.  After all, it still pains me to remember hearing the grumpy guy who told me “you’re too big!” when I rang his bell in my yearly witches’ costume.  I love holidays.  Aren’t we supposed to get into these celebrations?

Glorious Grease

FROM WHERE I SIT Glorious Grease Oct. 3, 2013     Pat DeKok Spilseth

The government’s food pyramid forgot about flavor.  Everyone knows that grease adds flavor to a dish.  I understand the importance of fruits, vegetables, seed and grains, but what about tasty flavors?  Butter, oil, sour cream, and cheese are key ingredients that add flavor.

Grease was an important part of my family’s meals: it was the essential ingredient in our daily dinners and suppers and all the lunches we had in between.  My favorite meal was when Mom fried lean sidepork, salted it heavily, and fried it to a crispy crunch in hot, snapping grease.  Every mouth watered at the sound of sidepork sizzling in grease in Mom’s black cast iron frying pan.  Though grease left telltale blotches on her rickrack trimmed bib apron, and our kitchen floor got a bit sticky and slippery with the grease splatters, the mess was worth it.

Dinnertime was noisy.  We crunched and chewed crisp side pork, savoring every salty bite.  Sidepork was accompanied by chunky white Idaho boiled potatoes smothered with Mom’s homemade milk gravy and canned applesauce.  Yum...that meal tasted better than a $100 steak dinner!  I preferred a homemade meal of sidepork rather than fine dining at Andy’s Fireside Club in Alexandra, our once-a-year treat.

Mom insisted that we eat some vegetables.  Not many fresh fruits and veggies were available in rural Minnesota in the Fifties and Sixties.  We ate canned green beans in a casserole with mushroom soup, soggy green peas and corn nibblets canned by the Jolly Green Giant or Del Monte.  A good selection of canned veggies were available at Bob’s Meat Market or Harry’s Corner Grocery, just across the street from the jail and courthouse.  

Maybe veggies might have had more flavor if Mom hadn’t boiled them to a soggy mush.  She made sure everything was good fully because she was deathly afraid of food-borne sicknesses.  After all, she had to look out for the jail prisoners’ health as well as her family’s.   

Iceberg lettuce was the only lettuce available at the grocery stores.  We didn’t know about those exotic romaine or bib lettuces.  We didn’t have a vegetable garden at the jail.  My parents were too busy to plant and tend a garden in addition to supervising the sheriff’s office with its two-way radio, the phones, cleaning our large living quarters and cooking three meals a day for the prisoners.  

Though she wasn’t big on digging in the dirt, outside our kitchen door Mom did grow red Oriental poppies and pink, lavender and white sweet peas that crawled up the chicken wire fencing by our back door steps. 

Mom learned cooking when she was a farm kid with a widowed mother and five brothers outside Starbuck, MN.  She learned healthy meal planning when she attended high school at “Cow College” in Morris.  She worked as a helper to other farm families to earn money to live in the school’s dormitory at what is now the University of Minnesota, Morris campus.  She learned homemaking skills like cooking, healthy meal planning, sewing and baking.  In the Thirties, family meals were of utmost important as most girls became wives and mothers after graduation.   Mom learned to “dress” a salad: a green lettuce leaf was opened and filled with a pale pear from canned fruit jars.  The salad would be decorated with a dab of Miracle Whip mayonnaise, chopped walnuts and a red cherry on top.  Her salads looked like an ice cream cone with a fancy topping.  It filled the latest government food pyramid requirements of fruit and greens.  

Being raised on a farm, both Mom and Dad insisted that we use real butter.  No margarine for us, until the prices went sky-high.  Not able to afford the real stuff, we learned to massage the plastic margarine bag with our hands and burst the red bubble in the middle, making the white margarine turn yellow.  It almost looked like real butter.  Farmers wouldn’t permit margarine to be packaged yellow: that would make margarine look like real butter.  Farmers wanted to sell their product, not the imitation stuff.

Though Mom baked loaves of fluffy, homemade white bread every week, it was a treat when we got to buy Wonder Bread at the store.  Those happy-looking packages of red, blue and white polka dots promised to “made healthy bodies eight ways.”  I don’t think the company ever listed the ways, but we believed what the package said.  Store bought bread was a time-saver for Mom.  Weeky, she would stand at our Formica kitchen table to knead pasty, white dough and bake at least four pans of browned loaves with an extra coating of butter to make the crusts glossy.

My parents believed everything was better with lots of butter, especially pastries.  Mom was “dessert queen” at the jail, a title I’ve inherited in my neighborhood.  Like my mom Esther, I love to bake sweet treats, but I don’t have the amount of company she and Dad had at the jail.  She served coffee and pastries three times a day.  Often she’d remark, “I wish I had a nickel for every cup of coffee I’ve served.”   She loved serving coffee and cookies or cake to the County Courthouse workers many morning at 10AM and afternoon coffee and treats at 3PM.  Our kitchen table at the jail usually had at least five people licking Mom’s chocolate frosting from their fingers or munching carrot cookies with sweet, runny, orange icing.   At Christmas time she served homemade butterballs and sour cream cookies plus deep-fried glazed doughnuts.  Every recipe called for fresh farm butter, white sugar, white flour and eggs.  

We hale and hearty Scandinavians were raised on white food and grease.  To this day, we still want to taste the good flavors that only grease can add.  984 words

DIZZY HALLUCINATIONS

Other writers may have electrifying visions, often induced by drugs and alcohol, but chocolate cheesecake with red wine at my monthly book club can kick start my spinning head.  Rich delicacies tend to inflate my imagination as they upset my stomach.  Today, dizzy and nauseo  us, I’m lying in bed while images spin wildly through my mind.  Undulading waves of characters present themselves, formost is Nicotine Nettie.  

Even today, fifty years later, I still see her, shuffling along the sidewalks of downtown Glenwood.  Nicotine Nelly’s beady black eyes shift across the cracked sidewalk of Main Street searching for discarded cigarette butts.  Hoping to spy a discarded, partially smoked butt on the ground outside Dick’s Pool Hall, she bends over and picks up the smoldering stick of tobacco.  Anticipating a few satisfying puffs of nicotine, her sunken cheeks suck in the enticing smoke.

As a kid I couldn’t help but stare.  The wizened woman was such an anomaly.  In our small town of 2500 people, mostly Scandinavians and Germans, no other woman in the community wore her greasy, long, streaked gray hair in a tight braid down the back of her body.  No doubts about it, Nellie was different.  

Back in the late Fifties, in rural MInnesota, our resort area was made up of hardworking farmers, carpenters, shopkeepers, truckers, mechanics, resort owners, fishermen and hunters along with a few professional lawyers, teachers, ministers and doctors.  We had no blacks, no Orientals, and only a handful of Indians.  Certainly, we’d never heard of Muslims, Buddists, or Scientologists!  We only knew about Jews from the history books about the war.  We were Catholics and Lutherans: it wasn’t kosher to date or marry out of one’s own religion.  

Nellie was on her way to the jail in the middle of town.  Next to the museum-like Court house where all the county’s official business was done was the red brick jail.  We had three important, official looking buildings in Glenwood.  Along with several spired churches, there was one central block in town housing the stately, tan Courthouse, the jail with windows of iron bars, and the Carneige library across the street.  

I lived at the jail.  My Dad was Sheriff Henry DeKok.  In those days, the sheriff had large living quarters in the red brick building, which housed the men’s jail downstairs next to Dad’s office as well as the women’s jail upstairs.   Barbie, my little sister, was born Nov 5, an election date baby, a tomboy to make up for Dad’s lack of a son.  Her older sister, me, was a girl who usually had her head in a book or was playing with dolls.  Mom cooked all the meals for the prisoners and her family, at least 3 meals a day along with morning, afternoon and evening coffee and sweets.  She baked breads, hotdishes, cakes and cookies for us at the jail and served coffee parties to the Court House gang most forenoons and afternoons.

Back to Nellie.  Most days she walked to the jail to see her son Blackie, often incarcerated behind the yellowed bars of the jail with one or two others who had a drinking problem.  Dear Blackie, what a guy!  He had a university education, but liquor got its hold on him early on and spoiled his future.  

Outside the jail’s windows with steel bars, my pals and I stood watching Blackie, the entertainer of great athletic prowess.  We were fascinated to watch him do acrobatics on the blue and white striped ticking covering the jail’s mattresses.  Blackie could perform head stands, flips, backbends...he was a juggler with his body!  We oohed and aahed as he performed one trick after another.  He didn’t talk much.  I think his talking might have scared us: we were still little kids.  

Nellie didn’t talk much either.  I don’t remember her speaking, but she must have shared some things with her son.  There didn’t seem to be a father in the picture as he never appeared at the jail.  Blackie had no other visitors that I can recall.  I think he liked being with my family at the jail because he’d land in jail most Octobers to spend the holidays with us.  He’d get drunk and get a three month sentence to jail.  My folks invited him to share Christmas with us around our Christmas tree in the living room where Dad read the Christmas story from Luke, and we sat on the floor opening a few presents.  I wonder if Mom bought socks for Blackie...or maybe cigarettes.  She always said, “The guys in jail are not bad men; they just made bad choices.”

Nellie and Blackie seemed to fade from my view as I grew into a teenager.  Now I wonder whatever happenned to these folks who lived somewhere in Glenwood, so different from the rest of us Scandinavians and Germans.  Did they go to church?  That was almost a requirement for folks who lived in my little town in the Fifties and Sixties.  Sunday church was our primary social outlet, besides the Lakeside Ballroom where grown ups kicked up their heels and let off steam.  Oh, how this dizzy spell bring back characters from my childhood!  868

Another Birthday Looms

FROM WHERE IS SIT  ANOTHER BIRTHDAY LOOMS  AUG 5, 2013  PAT SPILSETH

Another birthday looms on my calendar.  Who thinks that birthdays are meant to be celebrated once one passes 40, even 40?  Of course, another birthday is better than that bitter alternative...oblivion!

One more year and several weeks before my next BIG birthday arrives.  That gives me a year of grace.  I can count my blessings.  There’s still time for me to do what my body can attempt to do.  Forget water skiing, paddle boarding, biking around the lake or canoeing across Minnewaska.  Nope, those escapades are in the past.  Now I simply look forward to dinner out at a special dining spot, a few bobbles and bubbles to lift my spirits, maybe a best seller to curl up with on the deck and friends to discuss the world’s problems.  

My birthday usually arrives on or near the first day of school each September.  That day used to mean a new beginning, a fresh start.  This year, nope.  What happened to my exotic dreams of taking a trip on the Orient Express, having my fabulous fortune read, and dining on silk pillows in some ornate palace in the Far East?  Every day I wake, still looking for some new passion to add zest to my life.  I only see me, in a comfy sweatsuit, reading in my red leather chair, looking out at the falling leaves and cooling temperatures.   

As Andy Rooney remarked when someone said “I see you celebrated your birthday yesterday.”  Rooney replied, “NO, I HAD A BIRTHDAY YESTERDAY.  THERE WAS NOTHING CELEBRATORY ABOUT IT.”

It’s hard to say at what age a person reaches the top of the hill and starts down the back side.  Physically, it might have been when I opted for a left knee replacement and the arduous physical therapy.  Today, I can still ride a bike and walk the dog, but I no longer kneel on that knee, run or do jumping jacks...that hurts.  Thank goodness for ALEVE.  I could be their company spokeswoman selling that healing power.  I’m sleeping more; enjoying a good night’s sleep less.

When others chat with me, nobody has mentioned noticing any mental decline in my thinking or speaking.  But I do notice a few bits and pieces of memory loss.  I make a few editing errors in my columns.  I take pride in my friends calling me “Dessert Queen”, but sometimes I miss an ingredient or two in a recipe.  My tortes and cookies might not be as buttery or sweet as they used to be.  I might forget to add an egg or was it baking soda or powder I was supposed to add?  Priding myself on my “multi-tasking”, as we women are prone to do, no longer am I as efficient as in former days.  Amazingly, I missed the exit on my way home recently!  Day dreaming again?  Oh, well, I found a new way home.  Change is good, someone once said.  

Forget about learning a new language.   I’m simply not interested.  And traveling is such a pain today with skimpier seats on airplanes, no free food to munch on, and most airlines charge extra to check a bag.  And I don’t want to pay through the nose to vacation in countries where intolerant, grumpy immigration agents look at me suspiciously in their gray, depressing, unwelcoming airports in Russia or Venezuela.   I can’t imagine enjoying an overseas trip if I have to fly in some midget airplane seat.  First class might be another story, but I don’t have the extra cash. 

What’s happened to that adventuresome wanderlust I used to enjoy?  I had a good time taking unexpected trips to unknown destinations, meeting interesting folks and tasting spicy dishes.  I only carried a tiny carry-on tote with a change of underwear, a few lotions and a swim suit.  It was fun figuring out another country’s complicated money system, tasting new food flavors, and ending up at some unexpected destination on their tube’s itinerary.  Life was an adventure for me to enjoy!

And what adventures they were.  When in France, I tried to speak their language, but  eye brows shot up and disapproving chins down when I mispronounced their fancy words.  My Midwest Scandinavian accent didn’t work well with their French.  Hey, I  was trying  to speak their language!  In Italy, no matter what country a girl came from, we enjoyed those attentive Italians who shouted “Bella, Bella” as they tried to pinch our bottoms.   And I’ll never forget throwing coins into the Fountain of Trevi in Rome and making wishes.  Some actually came true.  That was an exciting time of life!  However, when I travel now and need a bathroom, I don’t want to take the time to find the correct word in my travel dictionary of another language.  Just get me to the proper room!  FAST!

Who was the wise guy who said “wisdom comes with age”?  Nobody under 30!  As I’ve aged, I think I’ve become more mellow and a bit more conservative.  I have my principles, but I’m quite tolerant of other ideas.  I’ll respectfully listen to the opinions of others, but I will reserve the right to disagree, sometimes strongly.  Usually, I will be Minnesota NICE.

Edna St. Vincent MIllay wrote, “I only know that summer sang in me/A little while, that in me sings no more.”

Well, summer, winter, spring and fall still sing within me.  I’ll continue to sing Happy Birthday to myself and friends, but, truth be known, I’d rather be 33 all over again. 

934 words

FROM WHERE I SIT Hot Dish Extravaganza

FROM WHERE I SIT   Hot Dish Extravaganza     Sept. 4, 2013  Pat DeKok Spilseth

Cheese has always been a favorite delicacy of mine ever since growing up with Velveeta in the long golden box with red letters.  Mom made grilled cheese sandwiches with Velveeta’s golden slices on the electric stove, smothering Wonder bread whiteness with butter, frying and flipping the sandwiches in her heavy, black, cast iron frying pan.  Delicious!  Grilled cheese sandwiches were a favorite treat in our family, especially if Mom had just baked a loaf or two of her homemade bread and tucked in a few of her homemade bread and butter pickles or those chubby, pimply, dill pickles which she canned every September.  

When we felt “flush” with a bit of extra cash, Dad might purchase a bag of salty potato chips or his favorite shoestring potatoes.  The greasy, browned sandwiches would be topped off with my favorite, a tall bottle of Orange Crush pop.  Mom would add a few celery ribs and a scrubbed carrot to our plates: she had healthy instincts way back then.  When I was in grade school, those ingredients made up my favorite supper.  Naturally, when I became a teenager, Chef Boyardee pizza in the box became my new favorite.  

Fall meant church suppers with those long tables spread with various pie pieces on a plate. I got to choose only one.  What a dilemna: should I take the apple or the cherry, the lemon meriange or the pecan?  Maybe I’ll try the sour creme raisen, Mom’s favorite.  Most churches served either a chicken or roast beef dinner with mashed potatoes smothered in thick brown gravy.  A few spoonfuls of vegetables accompanied the main dish.  I preferred yellow corn nibblets rather than soggy peas or watery beans.  

Candidates for the November elections in Pope County often chose those suppers to campaign for office throughout the county.  Dad hated to campaign, but that seemed to be a necessary evil for any county office.  When he was the sheriff, he figured his record should stand for itself.  He hated catering to anybody, especially some gabby politician.  “All talk; no action” was Dad’s opinion of several guys on the county board.  He wasn’t good at glad-handing or smoothing over the rough spots of arguments.  Thank goodness he had Mom to smile and soothe some ruffled feathers.

Fall still brings out my need for warm meat and potato suppers, hot from the oven.  I loved the toasty-warm kitchen at the Pope County jail where Mom wore a bib apron as she cooked, fried and baked.  We’d sit around the gray Formica kitchen table with the stuffed gray vinyl chairs and talk about my day at school, piano lessons, the prisoners in our jail and if Mom won any pennies at her card club.  Mom enjoyed making comfort food like meat loaf stuffed with chopped white onions and dried bread cubes.  Sprinkles of dried sage gave the dish more flavor.  Another signature dish she often served was a tomato-noodle and hamburger hot dish with lots of chopped onions.  She’d add a can of Campbell’s Topmato soup and boiled elbow macaroni noodles.  My very best favorite meal was side pork.  From way upstairs in my bedroom where I’d was studying. I could smell the fat slices of pork sizzling in hot grease.  I couldn’t help myself: I had to get downstairs into the kitchen to help turn the side pork until it browned, the grease dried off, and the frying pan was ready to stir up the milk gravy.  Mmmmmm, I can still taste the crisp side pork and the chunks of white potatoes smothered in milk gravy.

MY very least favorite meal was Swiss Steak: tough chunks of meat bubbling in the cast iron skillet floated in juices of tomatoes, onions, green peppers and tomato juice.  Mom was a firm believer that meat had to be well cooked or we might get sick.  

Minnesota must be the Hot Dish capital of the world.  It’s the perfect meal to stretch the family budget.  Requiring only a little meat, hot dish recipes consisted of numerous garden vegetables, salt, pepper, a can of soup and plenty of various-shaped noodles.

Of course, wine was not used in my family.  That was reserved for communion at church and maybe a thimbleful of sweet red Mogan David wine at Christmas.  

Venison was the mainstay of our meals each winter.  Dad would go deer hunt with some buddies, have the meat cut and wrapped at the locker downtown, and the packages would be stacked in our freezer chest in the basement.  With enough garlic and onions the wild, gamey taste of venison was almost camouflaged.  The meat was always dry, well-down and very chewy.  Where I grew up, that’s the way meat was supposed to be in the Fifties and Sixties.

Sometimes Mom experiented and tried a fancy new dish like wild rice hot dish with sausage chunks.  As always, the sausage was venison, but the onions and garlic added plenty of flavor to the meal.  She might go extra wild and add soy sauce.  That seemed to add an “exotic, foreign” flavor: in my imagination I’d be transported to some exotic land where people with slanty eyes lived in bamboo houses...

Autumn’s cooler weather has invaded MInnesota.  It’s a grand time of the year to enjoy the red sumac and the burgundy and golden leaves of the maple trees.  School days have arrived along with cool days, wool blanket nights and flannel pajamas.  It’s time for cozy evenings by the fire and a comfort meal, a steaming hot dish reminding me of home. 947 words

READIN' & WRITIN" & 'RITHMETIC

Pat Spilseth

Is your mind spinning with that old song about school days?  It’s that time of year again; Labor Day means the end of summer.  It brings back those dreaded thoughts of hot days and sweating palms.

“School days, school days

 Dear old golden rule days

 Readin’ and ritin’ and ‘rithmetic

Taught to the tune of the hickory stick

You were my queen in calico

I was your bashful barefoot beau

And you wrote on my slate

“I love you, so”

When we were a couple of kids...”

A reality check: at that time of your life, who knew anything about a hickory stick?  That was before we were school age kids, wasn’t it?  And how about those slates?  That sounds like something out of Charles Dickens’ novels.

But the tune keeps playin’...

So many School Days songs have been created through the years.  I’m particularly partial to those surfin’ Beach Boys’ tunes.  Sure, today they’re all in their sixties and seventies, but they were so cool in my school days.   And when they sang “Graduation Day”, who could help but shed a few tears for memories long gone?

And when Jeannie C. Riley came out with “Harper Valley PTA”, we grabbed a partner and ran out onto the dance floor.  Best of all, I did love slow dancing to the Four Lads when they sang “Moments to Remember”.  

Throw in Doris Day’s “Teacher’s Pet” and the Jackson 5’s “ABC”.  Nobody can sit still.  We have to be dancin’!

It’s about that time again.  Labor Day means school starts the next day, which many times happened to be my birthday.  The State Fair is over; reunions are done, and moms have started to can those juicy Colorado peaches.  No more swimming at the beach; no more picnics; no more sunning with Coppertone.  

It’s time for new jeans, tennies, cords and new wool sweaters.  Sure, you’re bound to sweat profusely that first day of school, when the temperature in the hot classrooms hits 90.  But you’ll look so good!  

I sure hope your school will be air conditioned.  Who can manage to sit still and learn multiplication tables, historic dates or all the “be” verbs when the dew point is over 65 in the classroom?  Why is school starting before the weather cools down in MInnesota?

It’s a nerve-wracking time of year for kids.  Identities and reputations are made those first days of school.  Self-esteem can be so easily shattered if a guy doesn’t make the football team or a girl the cheerleading squad or get that drama role she had her heart set on. If you’re a teenager, you worry about dating.  School days can be ego-crushing days.  Then what does a parent do to fill the social void of their kid?  And there are other dilemmas.  Why can’t I have a car?  How do I cover my pimples? I’m 13; why won’t you let me date?  I’m a teenager now, almost grown up!

When that big yellow school bus comes roaring around the corner, kindergarteners may have those tummy-tumbling pangs as strong as their older siblings.  Not having moms and dads nearby can be traumatic; doubts creep into their minds.  Tears may surface.  I was a basket case my first day of first grade in Miss Gwen Turnquist’s classroom until I spied my neighborhood pal in another wooden desk with a flip-top.  Then Mom could leave.  Martha saved the day.  

Then comes high school and trying to remember where the next classroom is and what my locker combination is and did I remember the right book for class...teen life is such turmoil.  But college is the true independence test:  no parents, no bedroom of my own, and will I have any friends?  When I left for college, Lynn Krook, Dad’s deputy sheriff at the jail, gave me a “crying towel” to soothe my tears so far from home.  Years later that towel is still in use, but not by me.  Son Andy uses it to clean boats at his Tidyboat business on the lake.  We are a recycling family.

That’s all in the past now.  Thankfully, it was way back, when we were a couple of kids.  719

REUNION LONGEVITY

FROM WHERE I SIT  Reunion Longevity   AUG. 26, 2013  PAT SPILSETH

There used to be a section of weekly local newspapers which recounted the social events of families in the community during the past week.  Usually a woman was employed by the paper who would call various residents in the area and inquire about who had visited whom during the week; who poured coffee at the wedding reception and who came from out of town to visit.  I think Florence Avery was the social columnist at the Pope County Tribune back in the 1950 and 60’s.

It was back to memory-filled Lake Wobegon days this past weekend for Dave and me.  We drove out to Luther Crest Bible Camp in Alexandria, MN, to join Lovstad family relatives.  Cousins came from Missouri,  Washington, Iowa and Illinois to share stories and, of course, to eat together as all good Scandinavians must do when they gather.  Though there weren’t any Swedish meatballs, the camp staff served browned meatballs, mashed potatoes and thick brown gravy along with the expected dessert at each meal.  Something sweet is always a requisite with endless cups of weak Lutheran coffee.  However, due to the current passion for strong cups of Caribou coffee, our tastes have changed: this reunion, we doubled the strength of the coffee.

“Come Lord Jesus” was the prayer we recited before each meal, the same prayer we learned as little children whenever we gathered around the kitchen table to eat.  I wonder how many of us still say that childhood prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep”, before crawling into bed?

The older generation was not able to attend.  This past year we lost three family members: Marvin Lovstad, his wife Betty, and Agnes Spilseth.  Longevity is definitely in the Lovstad family.  Aunt Florence is mentally sharp and lovely at 100, still living in her home with help from her three children who live nearby.  In their late nineties, Aunt Pearl and Aunt Jane live in assisted living homes, with family members living close by.  

The next generation is in charge of current reunions, children of their parents from the “Greatest Generation” who went through the Depression and survived, stronger than ever.  No longer is coffee the main beverage at our gatherings.  Wine has been added...amazing, since our parents were usually teetolers.  However, one of the grandchildren is now employed as a wine vendor in Fargo.  Jamie had a wine tasting for us where she explained what food to serve with which wine and informed us that rose’ is the new favorite. No longer sweet, it’s drier to fit the palates of this generation.  

Though temperatures were in the nineties, the sumac was already turning red and burgandy and gold leaves were falling.  It was time to return to our annual tradition of lefse making.  Cousin LaVonne had followed her mother Pearl’s recipe.  She boiled and beat white Idaho potatoes with plenty of butter and refrigerated the dough.  Adding flour, we mixed and rolled the golf ball sized dough on the lefse cloth into doily shaped circles and fried them on lefse grills. Pearl’s recipe didn’t stick to the cloth or the grill.  The lefse was so thin and light; it wasn’t the least bit dry.  Could the difference have been in the amount of butter or was it those Idaho potatoes, which weren’t so wet?  We had a routine: some rolled; some fried, and others lifted the slightly browned lefse with the rosemaled lefse stick.  Melted butter was spread on the lefse with a paint brush utensil and plenty of white sugar was sprinkled on the fried dough.  We devoured the lefse, the perfect Scandinavian treat, usually eaten at holiday times.

Who would have thought that campfires would still be a hit for us post middle-agers.  The fire kept away the mosquitos as we gathered by the lake under the glowing moon.   Reunion leaders Barb, Bud, Doug and Milana organized the games: trivia questions had us guessing about family members’ lives and events, and we mixed it up with trying to identify the person whose name was taped to our backs.  Aunt Pearl had saved so many keepsakes: graduation announcements, wedding invitations, and photographs. Vern found a 1930 newspaper from Burt, Iowa, home of many Lovstads, which mentioned the deteriorating population of the KKK from 250,000 down to less than 100,000.  White elephant gifts were handed out, and throughout the weekend, our chronicler Milana captured each moment with her camera.  

As the weekend ended, we celebrated Cousin Vern’s birthday with slices of chocolate-mint cake and a chorus of Happy Birthday.  It took us hours to say goodbye, but isn’t that the typical Norwegian goodbye routine?   Happy memories of our reunion will stay with us. In two years we’ll gather again at Jim and Linda Lovestad’s home near Duluth.  811